


Find Your Own Way Back Home

by locketofyourhair



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders/omc - Freeform, Diary/Journal, F/M, Kidfic, Not DAI compliant, Original Character(s), Post-Game(s), Tranquility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These books are slim, without names on the covers, and when he opens one, he can see that some of the pages are blank. Others are covered with small handwriting that he knows well, and it feels like a blow to see it again. They are journals; they are Hawke’s journals. </p><p>He reads them as he finds himself adrift without her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started over a year ago, with a prompt from Loquaciousquark about excerpts from Hawke’s journal. I've poked at it here and there, and now that it's terribly and embarrassingly almost all my favorite things in a fic, I'm setting it free. 
> 
> Note: This fic was started back when we thought the mage-templar war was going to be, well, an actual war, and I was too far into the writing to go back and try to mash it into something canon-compliant after the release of Inquisition. 
> 
> Thank you to the lovely riversburns for her excellent beta work. Title comes from "Folkin Around" by Panic! at the Disco.

Fenris stops in a small inn outside Val Foret when he cannot walk anymore, the road looming larger than he would have thought. Traveling without meaning is harder than fleeing, and he realizes that too late. 

There is a village some miles from the Imperial Highway, and he thinks perhaps he might see about settling there, some place where no one would think to look for an elf alone. He does not know what services he could offer, but something will work out. 

If it does not, he shall move on again.

The room is small but serviceable, and there is a bath with tepid water, materials that he might use to scour salt and dust from his armor. Perhaps he will stay longer than a day. 

He unpacks to find clean leggings, a tunic, anything, and the books tumble out then, tucked between a small stack of letters and an empty waterskin.

He does not know how the collection of books came to be in his pack. When they fled Kirkwall, all the books he had amassed had to be left behind. He brought only _A Slave’s Life_ , and only because it was more to him than just a book: it was the first book he read, a gift from Hawke. There was still hope for him in the words, even if Shartan believed in the Creators and not in the Maker, even if he knew that Andraste’s promises of freedom would be betrayed and Fenris was living proof. 

These books are slim, without names on the covers, and when he opens one, he can see that some of the pages are blank. Others are covered with small handwriting that he knows well, and it feels like a blow to see it again. 

They are journals; they are Hawke’s journals.

Fenris snaps the book shut and sets it aside. He has a bath waiting, and he has not cleaned his armor since they fled on Isabela’s ship. He cannot put these things off any longer. 

His hair is gritty and longer now than he has ever let it grow before, much longer than Danarius would have allowed. Such a thought makes him forgo trimming it. He has a while yet before it begins to interfere with fighting.

Fenris means to clean his armor and make sure his blade is sharpened, that the grip is still tight, but he passes the journals again. 

Hawke isn’t here. He doesn’t know where she is. It is unlikely he will ever see her again. 

Perhaps she put the journals there. 

The thought is enough to convince him to read.

***

_22nd Justinian, Dragon 9:31_

23g, 43s. 

Carver is beginning to worry we won’t have enough for the expedition, but Varric will buy us time. Varric promises to buy us time. 

 

_30 Justinian, Dragon 9:31_

27g, 12s  
Owe Aveline 2g  
Owe Varric 1g

Sold off the last of our mercenary gear this morning. Carver says it wasn’t worth the time to talk business. My dear brother doesn’t know the definition of “every little bit helps.”

Have a lead on a contact in Lowtown for a job. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but it’s getting harder to keep the money together, especially when we’re starting to split it six ways. Aveline has stopped taking her share. Varric will take his out of the profits at the end. 

I miss snow. This city is so dreary and it bakes this time of year. I don’t know how Aveline stands her armor. I have heat rash in the most unmentionable places.

Mother cried most of last night. She waited until Carver had gone to spend his hard earned gold at the Hanged Man. I don’t think she knows I was awake.

I will get her out of this house.

 

_6 Solace, Dragon 9:31_

33g, 70s  
Owe Aveline 4g  
Owe Varric 3g, 15s

Fenris will work with us. He seems less put off at the thought of working with a mage than I thought he would. Carver is accusing me of picking up strays. First Anders and Merrill (though he never complained overmuch with her, surprise!), then Isabela (who is more like a cat who moves into your barn because she finds the mice quite tasty), and now Fenris. 

‘We don’t need him, Marian. Aveline and I are perfectly capable.’ I think he’s jealous that Fenris is half a foot shorter than he, yet he handles a greatsword like he was born with it in his hand. 

Haven’t told Carver that if Fenris works with us, we’ll have to pay him. 

 

_27 Solace, Dragon 9:31_

48g, 27s.  
Owe Aveline 7g  
Owe Varric 5g

Remember to ask Varric about how to explain to Merrill that muggings aren’t actually a good thing. She’s a dear woman, blood mage or no, but definitely odd. 

I do love how she makes Carver stammer on when she focuses those happy smiles on him, but I don’t think she’d appreciate Carver looming over her if I told him about the muggings. Isabela would probably teach Merrill how to mug, and, well. Varric is just the best choice.

We are so close to the 50g. We should be there soon. We’re working with a templar, though. That was fun. I don’t like the way Carver is looking at the Order. Anders and Isabela both refuse to help. 

Fenris thinks the Gallows is wonderful. Sod.

Being a mercenary was easier than this. It’s almost worth going back, except of course, most of Meeran’s are a bit dead. 

Maker, but you do make your own issues, Hawke.

 

_10 August, Dragon 9:31_

Owe Aveline 9g  
Owe Varric 8g (minus the cost of his armor repair, remember to get amount)

We leave at the end of the month, which suits me well. I wish we were going before All Soul’s Day. It was bad enough when we had to remember Father. Now, there’s Bethany, too. 

I miss her. Carver never wants to talk about her. I cannot imagine what it felt like to him to lose her. Mother is like a ghost.

I miss her laugh. Everything is too quiet. 

I even miss when she would make supper for us all, and only Father and Mother could finish the charred mess. 

 

_29 Kingsway, Dragon 9:31_

Mother came out of her room today. I was nearly out the door to the Wounded Coast with Isabela and Fenris, and she stopped me. She hugged me. 

I don’t think she’s forgiven me. 

We haven’t heard yet. 

I wish I had been closer to the ogre. Then no one would have had the stupid idea to go into the Deep Roads. 

Fenris nearly decapitated me yesterday. He was hit by two arrows at once, and his swing went wide. If I didn’t know it would kill Mother, I think I might just stand closer to him when he’s lost in battle. Of everyone, he’d probably feel the least bad about it. 

He hasn’t tried to tell me how sorry he is, anyway. Even Isabela patted my shoulder and picked up my tab. 

Thank the Maker for that. I can’t handle anymore sad looks. 

He smiled at a joke the other day, though. He should do more of that. Aside from the terrible attitude and hatred of mages, he actually is quite handsome. Even Anders agrees, though he threatened to freeze my hair off if I told anyone.

***

Fenris puts the journal down. His chest is tight, and his eyes ache. Hawke is... He can feel her in the words, almost hear her laughter and her sorrow in the small, cramped writing. The candles have burned down, and his armor sits uncleaned in a heap on the floor.

He takes a clean cloth from his pack and carefully wraps the journals in it. He knows that he will not be able to part with them. If a younger Hawke still mired in the loss of Carver is the only one he can have, then he’ll bring her with him. 

It is dark now, moonlight casting shadows through his open window. It smells like rain. 

“Another night,” he decides as he stretches out on the bed. Someone sings in Orlesian downstairs. 

He sleeps and dreams of Hawke, of her wavering smile when the ship pulled away from the docks and she was left in a Ferelden port. She promised that she would find him as soon as there was a safe place to stow the abomination, someplace where he could be trusted not to make any more grand statements. 

Perhaps the journals were a way to dull the sting of that lie. 

Perhaps in time it will even work.

He leaves Val Foret after a week, after he's cleared bandits from the quarries who make off with livestock and pretty farm girls. He is ten sovereigns richer for his trouble.

At the edge of the city, there is a small shop that sells books. He stops in to look and touch and wish it were not folly to buy another book. He has an unknown amount of time ahead of him, a stretch of muddy road.

Fenris dares not read Hawke's journals when he doesn't have a roof over him. The thought of her words bleeding from the page is an ache he is unprepared for. He will lose even her memories. 

Instead he buys an oilskin to wrap them in, so they will be safe. And he buys a small blank book for himself, some charcoal.

His handwriting is atrocious, but he thinks Hawke would be proud to see his attempt at journaling. It makes him smile, and there is so little worth smiling about now.

***

_5 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:31_

Fenris came by to apologize for nearly killing me, in his way. 

“We should go to the Wounded Coast, so you get used to my fighting style.”

It’s nearly an apology, I guess. But I’ll take caves filled with muck and spiders over another too quiet dinner with Mother and Gamlen. I’ll bring some hard bread and cheap wine, and maybe he’ll agree to stay on the coast overnight. If we can clear one of the drier caves, we won’t even have to worry about a tent.

***

Fenris joins a small band of renegade Templars for a time. They promise they are only out to protect the innocent, and he knows that he is a fool for believing them after Kirkwall. But the Circles of Orlais fell not a month after Hawke defied Meredith, a waterfall that painted entire towns red with blood in the conflict. The country is filthy with apostates, one Templar tells him. They need to keep the good people of Orlais safe.

It doesn’t take long, however, for the templars to see blood magic everywhere, even in groups of terrified mages who run and cast barriers to keep templars back. He cannot bring himself to slaughter mages who haven’t turned to demons. It is not the abomination’s call that mages turn to blood magic as a means of last resort that slows his blade. 

He stays with them, but soon it’s out of fear of what they will do if he is not there. It’s the fear that he’ll come across one of their raids after the fact, that he’ll check the mage bodies and pull back a cowl on a woman’s body, and it will be Hawke’s face. There will be dark hair tumbling from under the cloth, sticking in the blood, bones exposed where a sword cleaved her neck open. 

Two months pass before he cannot abide it, when they are in a mining village a day’s walk from Montsimmard. The villages talk of a healer, a herbalist, who joined them recently after twenty years in the Circle. She is gifted and lovely, a man says, and the rest of the village agrees.

Then the templars press some gold into dirty palms, and suddenly she is a vicious thing. She uses blood magic to heal the wounded, and she takes money to heal accidents and disasters that she caused.

They shove Fenris away and promise him death if he is involved, and he should walk away. 

Except the healer has burning blue eyes when she answers her door for the templars, her smile open and honest, and she is older than Hawke, hair grey with age and skin lined. She screams when she sees them raise their weapons, and Fenris cannot walk away. He cannot abide this.

_You lead me to strange places._

He must save another mage, who cannot seem to draw offensive spells when the templars stand over her. He thinks Hawke would be disappointed at that. 

His hand slides easily into a templar’s chest, the last one. The cottage is ruined. 

“My name is Therese,” the mage says, her lips white. Blood soaks into the floors, into the threadbare rugs. 

“Fenris,” he says. He wonders if she has a garden large enough to bury them. They cannot risk burning this many bodies.

“I cannot offer much, but I have a mat by the fire and I am a fair cook,” she says, and her hands are shaking and there are more templars to come. He is sure of it. 

The cottage is warm, at least.

***

_13 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:31_

Still no word from Carver. Mother is going mad at Gamlen’s. Even the news that we can start moving forward to buy back to old estate doesn’t seem to do much to ease her moods now. Gamlen’s spending more time at the Rose, and he’s liable to come down with some wretched sickness there. 

Oh, and that’s disgusting. I think I may be going mad too.

Having money means I can actually get Mother and Gamlen something for Satinalia. Lothering went half-mad in celebration, but Kirkwall is so serious. The Hanged Man wasn’t, of course, and Anders says Darktown is deafening with all its celebrations. 

I have always wanted to party in sewers.

There are gifts for the others too. Flames, that’s going to be hard. Maybe some scarves. Mother’s darned most of them now, so they don’t look half bad.

 

_22 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:31_

Fenris and Anders are going to drive us all mad. We can’t so much as have a game of Wicked Grace without it becoming a debate on mages. They both lost their shirts, and yet they still had more vitriol for each other than they did Isabela and Varric shamelessly looking at their hands. 

Worse yet, every time the argument reached an impasse, Anders would drag my name into it. (As they both seem to think Merrill is a far greater threat than she is. How strange that they can agree on anything!)

Fenris sputters though, when he’s truly angry. His rhetorical skills are lacking, but he doesn’t need to convince us that mages can do terrible things. We need only to look at him. 

I can’t imagine what would drive you to carve those lines into someone’s skin. They’re beautiful, in their way, but he says they hurt. There is so much wrong in the world, and Anders is right that mages should be free.

But even I can’t blame Fenris for fearing what they would do with that freedom.

Flames, I’m going to have to get him a gift for Satinalia. Does he even celebrate it? I don’t know enough about Tevinter. Damn. 

Varric should know.

 

_Satinalia, Dragon 9:31_

They do in fact celebrate Satinalia in Tevinter, though Fenris says it’s more masques and balls and it sounds quite rich, to be honest. He has never actually been allowed to partake, from the way he spoke of it. He seems far away when he talks about how things were in Tevinter, until his anger kicks up from a bad memory.

I’m sure he has a lot of them.

He likes Kirkwall’s Satinalia though. I don’t think he went to the Chantry today, but the bells rang out over the city and I wish it had snowed. This city is bloody awful. No snow on Satinalia. It shouldn’t be allowed.

Darktown was obscene, bawdy dancing and a fool king, and I think Fenris may have smiled again. He came with Anders, Isabela, and I. It was a great deal of fun, almost like home.

Next year, if Mother’s spirits are better, I’ll make her come along too.

Gifts were well-received. Everyone got a scarf from Mother, and I tried to be practical. Brandy for Varric, rum for Isabella. I found a dear knitted hat for Merrill in the alienage. Her house is so cold, and the hat is larger so her ears will be covered.

Fenris rather liked the whetstone and wine. He is an easy man to please in some aspects. 

 

_22 Firstfall, Dragon 9:31_

Fenris found a cracked green stone on a job with Varric and Aveline. They couldn’t risk mages. The bandits were templars. 

He felt bad that he had nothing to give me on Satinalia. 

It’s the color of his eyes, I think, but I doubt he realized that. It’s possible he doesn’t even know what color they are. Every mirror in his borrowed mansion is broken and/or covered in demon slime.

 

_5 Haring, Dragon 9:31_

Carver is alive. Carver is alive. Carver is alive.

He’s written Mother, and she shrieked and she’s read the letter to us five times. 

Even Gamlen is smiling. 

Thank the Maker, Andraste, and Andraste’s mabari. By the Void, thank Merrill’s Creators and anyone else who listened to my mother’s prayers and my foolish hopes.

Thank you.

***

He gives up on writing in a journal shamefully fast. His hands hurt from holding the charcoal too tightly, and his words are large and clumsy. He finds sketching small things in the blank pages more soothing, strangely freeing.

Danarius never would have tolerated him drawing when he served him, and while he remembers more and more, his life before is largely lost. Perhaps he would make drawings in the dirt, if he was a bad slave and prone to dawdling. 

Such a thought makes him smile from his place beside the fire. 

He doesn’t stay with Therese long, just long enough for stories to come into Orlais about the Champion of Kirkwall and her companions, the mad apostate, the dwarf, the pirate queen, and the marked elves. He knows precisely the moment that she connects the stories with his appearance, when he is bringing in wood for the fire. 

In a month, he has become accustomed to helping. Therese never asks, and when he begins any project, she says that she will get by just fine. Her hands are gnarled from arthritis, and she limps in cold weather. He shakes his head and insists that he help, payment for the food if nothing else. 

He finds that he’s not terrible at working with lumber, that he does it well enough to fix a proper bed for Therese. He isn’t bothered by his mat on the floor. He is not as young as he used to be, true, and his back protests on cold mornings, but she is a kind woman who helps so many. 

She rarely takes payment for her healing. He makes her a bed and one of the women from town brings a blanket stuffed with down.

Except that morning, when Therese smiles at him, and there is something strained, stressed there. He sets the wood down. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve heard that they’re looking for a friend of the Champion in Montsimmard. It won’t take them long to find this place,” she says, and she grips the back of a chair so hard that her knuckles blanch. “The Chantry is looking for them.”

Fenris bows his head, and he knows he was right to leave Hawke. His appearance is so much more noticeable than hers. She can disappear into a city, into a throng of humans. He thinks she’s beautiful, but he knows that her lips are a little thin and her features just a touch too plain to be remembered. 

If her eyes were a flat blue, she would be invisible.

“I will be gone before supper,” he says, and Therese presses a small satchel of potions into his hands. 

“Thank you,” she says, and he can tell by the look on her face that he does not just mean for saving her from the templars.

He only regrets that he will be on the road again as the days grow colder. Wandering is tiring, and he finds that he misses having someone to talk to. Therese was not a talkative woman--nothing like Merrill--but she was pleasant. She did not mind his markings, and she never asked about them, never tried to touch them.

It was not until he came to Orlais that he realized how glad he was that Hawke and her friends gave him a wide berth.

***

_First Day, Dragon 9:32_

We’re moving in a few months. The slavers made a wreck of the house, and we need to finish finding furniture, but we’re moving out of Gamlen’s. If that isn’t a fantastic bit of news for First Day, I cannot imagine what could be. 

There’s drinks at the Hanged Man later. My mission is to pick up Fenris and three bottles of Hightown wine, per Varric. I think Fenris may have won a card game, because Varric has been very adamant about me retrieving him. 

_You’ll be neighbors soon, Hawke._  
I know that he won’t hurt you, Hawke.  
Hawke, do you want me to send Anders? Do you think Hightown is ready for that? 

I know he’s up to something, but I haven’t decided what it is yet. I have mending to take to Fenris anyway. He can’t seem to sew worth a damn, and I walked in on him trying to fix his last tunic, where an arrow pierced through his armor.

I gave the mending to Mother, but I have a sneaking suspicion she just bought a new tunic. She’s very concerned about Anders, Fenris, and Merrill, particularly when Merrill comes by to talk about cooking.

She probably just misses having someone to mother. I’m not as appreciative as I could be, and those three lend themselves to lots of mothering in general.

 

_4 Wintermarch, Dragon 9:32_

There was a templar raid in the Alienage. Merrill is fine, but three children were taken to the Circle as confirmed mages, another five because they’re siblings to the apostates.

I have never seen Anders so angry. He changes between Justice and himself so quickly he barely has time to stop being blue. 

Aveline told me that two elves were killed for trying to protect the children. If they were humans, she would probably be arresting templars. Or they would have just arrested the protesters. It’s the right thing to do, under the law.

I’m afraid to ask Fenris’ opinion. If he agrees with any of it, I’m not sure who would kill him first: me, Aveline, or Anders .

_10 Wintermarch, Dragon 9:32_

“Abuses of power are not exclusive to Tevinter magisters.” 

They’re having the last pyre tonight. Fenris will come with us.

***

Travelling through the Dales is an odd sensation. He is still in Orlais. There is no reason to settle yet. The Exalted Marches are old, the trials of a people he barely feels kinship to long since passed into memory for everyone but the Dalish. Still, he looks to the countryside and tries to imagine what it would have looked like the first time the freed elves came here, knowing that this would be their home.

Fenris takes to sketching when he has to stop in caves. He misses the sea like an ache. He remembers the Fog Warriors, and then he remembers Hawke on Isabela’s ship, with her hair wild in the wind. There were new lines around her eyes from worry, some of her joy gone, but she felt the same in his arms, when their mouths would slant together and she would let herself relax into him. 

Those moments were precious, and Fenris tries to record the look on her eyes with charcoal smudges. It never seems close enough. The blank journal is nearly filled.

Her journals are still safely stowed in the oil skin, and he tries not to read them too greedily, taking his time over old adventures and her terrible jokes.

It is becoming harder to remember her voice, how she talked to their clients. He can hear her laugh still, ringing in his ears, but the rest becomes fainter by the day.

He wonders how long until he cannot remember her at all. 

So many memories have already faded, washed away in the blistering pain and first glow of the lyrium. He cannot remember his mother’s voice or her smile, just her eyes that looked so very much like his, like Varania’s. He can only remember slivers of the girl who would grow up to betray him. 

He wonders where she is, if she has finally found something that would make her curse freedom less. He finds that he hopes she is safe, wherever she is.

Fenris wonders, too, if Hawke is starting to forget him. 

Better she does. She should have another life, after losing two in violence: first Lothering, now Kirkwall. 

He wishes there was a way to be sure she is happy.

***

_30 Drakonis, Dragon 9:32_

It’s so busy, restoring and moving into a manor. Mother hopes that there’s enough coin from the expedition that we might be able to hire some servants. I think she finds the house too quiet. Perry and I can only make so much noise, and Gamlen is shamefaced whenever he visits.

Which isn’t to say that Varric isn’t trying. We’ve had two dinner parties at his insistence, and both times, the Hanged Man was shockingly too crowded, and I won’t mind terribly.

I know you read these, Serah Tethras. I am onto you.

Still, though, even if we only a table and chairs and some mismatched plates, Mother seems to enjoy having everyone. I think Anders disconcerts her some--she keeps asking me if I’m sure he’s a good friend to have about; I think she’s worried I’ll take on her whims and run off with an apostate. That’s foolish, of course. 

If any apostate is going to be corrupting a young noble’s child, it’s going to me. I’ll have a merry harem through Hightown. 

Mother didn’t laugh. She used to find my jokes funny.

 

_24 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:32_

I am determined to preserve something of what’s going on, but it’s all the same. Argue with Mother about furniture that she thinks I should care about. Fight bandits. Drink at the Hanged Man until I can’t see straight. More than twice Fenris has been enlisted to walk me back to the house, and I think it’s hilarious. 

If I’m too drunk to take care of myself, Fenris is well past that. He looks small boned and delicate sometimes, but that sod is heavy when he’s leaning against you with his massive sword and all that spiky armor. 

He drinks because he can, which is true of anyone, but he likes wine because elves are forbidden in Tevinter. It’s so hard not to ask more questions about what it’s like there--you hear such stories\--but it cannot all be true. Some are too disturbing to be true.

I’ve fallen asleep in his mansion more than once, because we were too sodden to realize that we took a wrong turn. Maker, that place is something else. Fenris has taken to piling books in the corners in haphazard stacks. I’ve never seen him read them, just stacking them. 

Isabela is worried that he’s going to raid Varric’s collection to barricade himself into the mansion when Danarius comes. I’m much more concerned with the mushrooms growing in the foyer. I wonder: if he cleaned the windows, would the foyer get enough light so we could grow elfroot or spindleweed? We’d make a fortune.

 

_14 Justinian, Dragon 9:33_

Somehow this ended up filed in the library. Isabela probably read it and left it in there. Nothing is so interesting, and yet...

Nothing new to report. Isabela is still grabby. Varric is still a delight. Anders wants a cat, and Merrill got lost in the Chantry again. 

Aveline comes to dinner a lot now, and I think Fenris might be a dog person. Yet one more thing for he and Anders to fight about.

 

_2 Solace, Dragon 9:33_

Mother has started commenting that I am not getting any younger. 

I think she wants grandchildren.

Flames.

 

_21 Solace, Dragon 9:33_

Fenris is definitely a dog person. Perry likes to give him kisses, and he’s been sneaking bits off his plate when the lot comes for one of Mother’s dinners. 

So Things Fenris Likes More than He Likes Hating Mages: defending children, killing slavers, killing child abusers, dogs.

Quite the list I’m growing. Perhaps I’ll get him a puppy for Satinalia, though he’d probably let it fertilize his mushroom garden and Maker knows what else he’d let it do. He spoils Perry more than I do.

***

He begins to feel that he is the blight crossing the land. He is sure Therese is dead long before he hears of rumors of an apostate fighting templars, giving into a demon so the villagers would have time to run. There are burned down farms and villages struck by sickness that a mage could have cured, if so many were not terrified of the rebel templars and bandits-cum-mage hunters looking for quick bit of gold.

Fenris spends the winter in a farmhouse, with a young couple who are determined to stay happy despite the loss of most of their sheep to wolves. He sleeps in the barn, in a hayloft above the too-thin cows, and they promised to pay him but he doesn't accept their silver. Instead he eats bland stew and hard bread with them, food that reminds him forcibly of Hawke. 

He thinks that he may be in Ferelden at last, but he cannot bring himself to ask.

Neither of them can read. Fenris reads some of Shartan's book to them, trying hard not to stumble over the words. He doesn’t like to read aloud much. The man and woman aren't Hawke.

The man's name is Perrin, and when they run out of wheat, he makes Fenris promise that he'll stay in the cottage with the woman, Imelda. 

"No bandits will kill her with you here," Perrin says. He puts on a cap and straps a grey iron sword on his belt. The edge looks dull. "I'll be back in three days."

Except it snows that night and the morning after, and Fenris watches Imelda pace from window to window. "He should be all right," she keeps repeating, like a personal chant of light. "You'll see."

Fenris says nothing but pulls out Hawke’s journals. He knows the intoxicating feel of blind faith. It’s been months since he’s seen her, and he’s heard not a whisper of her whereabouts on the road. The Champion should be harder to hide, especially as he gets closer to Ferelden. Her actions might be hated by some--siding with mages, letting the abomination live--but she is a hero to so many.

Instead, there is the ever-increasing call for her companions, so they might know where to look for her. 

Hawke cannot be dead.

***

_2 Drakonis Dragon 9:34_

He is infuriating. I cannot understand how someone can be so sure of the absolute evil of magic. Even Anders can admit that not all mages have the best intent. 

I remind him of the raid and how he thought it was an abuse, and he snarls back that the Templars would never have been so brazen if the children were human. 

And even if he's probably right, there is no reason for him to get so angry that we take jobs from apostates. We hardly take him on them if we can help it, even if Aveline gets rather shirty because she's breaking the law and she's guard-captain. 

She should take it up with him. 

 

_13 Drakonis Dragon 9:34_

Merrill invited us to dinner at her home. Isabela, Mother, and I came--though Varric did come halfway through the last course.

I wouldn't call it dessert, exactly. Even Mother, who would force down Bethany's attempts, set her fork aside after two grainy bites. 

Merrill made me take some home for Fenris, and I didn't particularly like the way she said it. 

He didn't seem as bothered by the...meal. It made me wonder again what he ate in Tevinter. 

 

_17 Drakonis Dragon 9:34_

Fenris wouldn't comment on the food, just that Merrill's dish was less bland than most Kirkwall food. When I mentioned it wasn't exactly cooked, he almost-smiled and said something about me having to evolve an elven taste. 

Maker help me, but I think he was joking. 

 

_20 Drakonis Dragon 9:34_

I shouldn't let him get me so angry. I don't know what it is. One moment he is civil and the next he's saying something that I believe is mainly for Anders, but he seems to forget I'm as much a mage as our healer. 

I can't even remember what he said, but when I got home I had to go to the wine cellar and practice drills like I was eight again and Carver was being a brat. Fire, one two three; ice, one two three; lightning and so on. Father came up with it, and I still think it's silly. But it works. 

It was more fun with Bethany though, when we'd fling spells at each other. She used to cry and pretend to be hurt so Mother would fuss and give her a sweet. 

 

_23 Drakonis Dragon 9:34_

Isabela asked if a boy ever pulled my hair in Lothering. Only Carver, obviously. 

She laughed so hard she was near tears and still wouldn't share her liquor. 

I have the worst friends.

***

Three days stretch into three long weeks of snow and ice, and still Imelda sits by the frosted window panes and insists that Perrin will return. She coughs now, in the nights when she's let the fires die.

He says nothing but borrows Perrin's too-big boots and jacket so he may bring in more firewood and tend the cow. He has none of her blind faith. The wind's bite is unimaginable to him. 

Hawke talks of snow in her journals, but she never mentioned this aspect of winter. Kirkwall grew cold in the winter, and there was sleet and sometimes dirty snow that melted by noontime, but it was nothing like this. This is deadly, perhaps worse than the height of Tevinter summer, when at least one slave would drop dead a day from heat sickness and lack of water. 

And at least in summers, there were no rattling coughs that Imelda insists are nothing. 

For the first time in his flight, Fenris wishes for Anders. He housed a demon, even if he would not call it such, but he could heal the way most breathed, easy and sure. 

And then Imelda would live.

***

_1 Cloudreach Dragon 9:34_

Mother has taken to asking about Fenris. I am no fool. Something is afoot. 

When I asked her, she gave me that bland smile that has used to give Carver in Lothering, when he was chasing after milkmaids and chantry initiates. 

I am not chasing Fenris. He hates me, besides.

Well, maybe not hate, but he certainly dislikes me outside of our work. I’m a mage. He can do no less.

***

He watches Imelda die. It is a slow process, nearly a month. In the end, she cannot get out of bed, and her coughing stains her lips red with blood.

Fenris wraps her body in the bedlinens when she is gone, her skin cool to the touch and eyes gone cloudy. Another death on his hands, and had he stayed with Hawke and Anders--no. 

If he had stayed, they would have been found. His appearance is too hard to dismiss. He cannot blame himself. Had he not gone his own way, it is likely Imelda would have died on the the road with Perrin, or perhaps frozen to death when she was too weak to stoke the fire any longer. 

The winter storms break nearly three days later, as if the Maker is having a bit of fun his expense. Fenris goes out in borrowed boots again, searching around the farm for signs that Perrin may have tried to come home. The chicken coop is undisturbed, and the barn is quiet. 

He gets beyond the fence, and he finds Perrin there, face mottled blue and dark purple from the cold and ice. His eyes are open, and his tunic is half-undone. He has a pack bursting with wheat and a gift of fine lace. His eyes are closed. 

They go on the pyre together, and he begins to pack their belongs that he may be able to sell. 

He could keep the house, he supposes. It will be something to decide when the freeze ends. For now, he will keep their last sheep and their cow alive. There are pages yet in his own journal, even if every drawing begins to look like Hawke after a time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabela and Varric think it’s hilarious, how I’m mooning over him. It’s not like that. I’m not a hopeless child. I am merely weighing the pros and cons of entering into a mature relationship with elf who occasionally needs help picking heart sinew out of his gauntlets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you to riversburns for her patience and help betaing, even if she did keep changing Adari's name to Andani. :P

_10 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:34_

I’m not a complete idiot. I know I’m attracted to Fenris. Anyone with eyes should be at least, and it’s... Kirkwall is different from Lothering. There are risks here that I can’t take as an apostate, especially now that Mother’s got her home back, but Fenris knows everything. Fenris isn’t about to run off to the Templars to tattle on me. He might not love mages, any mages, but I know he trusts me not to suddenly turn into a mad blood mage.

He could be a risk worth taking, I think. Maybe. Except he’s the only one left good with two handed weapons, and he’s the only one at home with a sword when Aveline can’t come with us. 

What if something went wrong, and things got weird. We’ve just gotten over “weird.” 

Isabela and Varric think it’s hilarious, how I’m mooning over him. It’s not like that. I’m not a hopeless child. I am merely weighing the pros and cons of entering into a mature relationship with elf who occasionally needs help picking heart sinew out of his gauntlets.

 

_16 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:34_

I was wrong. I am hopeless.

Fenris opened up. He told me how little he knows about anything, about his past, his family. He’s from Seheron, he thinks, and it feels like I’ve been gutted to think on what he’s lost. 

He smiled at me, and I didn’t try to touch him. Andraste give me strength, but I think he may be as attracted to me as I am to him. 

 

_18 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:34_

I keep thinking about the conversation, the way he looked when he asked how one would rebuild a life. He wanted to know if I would go back to Lothering. 

There was no way to say that there is nothing in Ferelden for me now. My mother is here; my friends are here. I wish Carver were here, and Bethany, to be happy with us. 

This is where I should be, but there was no way to bring that up and not say that Kirkwall is where he is. Yes, Anders and Isabela and Varric and everyone else? They’re important. 

But there’s Fenris. There’s his small smile and the way his eyebrows seem to say more than he ever does. 

Flames. I really am lost on him. 

 

_20 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:34_

I keep forgetting to mention the most important thing: He called me beautiful. I need to write it because it feels like a dream and I feel as if I’m twelve again, remembering the very first time I realized how handsome the blacksmith’s apprentice was.

He wanted to know if anyone else has my attentions, and, yes, I’m a flirt. But it’s all in good fun with everyone but him. 

He thinks that his being an elf matters. 

Maker, I am like a besotted girl, filling these pages with thoughts of him. Enough.

Mother is having company tonight, and Bodahn is having food delivered. It will be quite the party. They’ll be her friends, not mine, and I’m sure half of them will mention their attractive sons. Hurrah.

***

Fenris doesn’t put much stock in signs. It’s not a sign that he’s in Ferelden when the spring thaw comes. It isn’t a sign that he’s not too far from the city of Highever. If Perrin was attempting to walk there in a freeze, he was a worse fool than Fenris thought. There are closer villages, hamlets that may be more expensive, but willing enough to trade.

It is not a sign that he comes across a massacre, overturned wagons and smears of blood on dusty roads. They are a common sight, sad enough, and have been now that most of the Circles have fallen to chaos. There are bandits dead, their bodies scorched, and he touches one with a careful hand. 

The flesh is still hot. The apostate is still here. 

Fenris draws his blade when he hears the scream, and he does not know what drives him forward. The scream is high, piteous, more a wounded animal than a human, and he is nearly sure that it’s a child. 

Magic sings through the air, around him, and he runs to the sound. 

He means to save a child from a crazed mage, but instead he finds two children facing a bandit, his maul raised and ready for the strike. The older child has flame in his hands, his face tight. 

Fenris does not hesitate. His sword finds the man, and his neck splits like brittle wood. 

But the screaming does not stop, and the child-mage still calls fire, his eyes huge now. 

“Stay back,” he says, and he is going to catch them all aflame. Fenris watches the fire in his hands grow higher. 

He puts his sword back on his back, so his hands are bare. He wills himself not to let the lyrium light, no matter the protection it will afford him. “I am not here to hurt either of you,” he says, voice gentle. He holds his hands up, trying to make himself appear as harmless as he can. 

The younger child, a girl, pulls herself back. She does not rush to stand with her brother--their faces are too similar to be anything but siblings--and Fenris has seen enough of Hawke and Carver to know that is wrong. 

“My name is Fenris,” he says, helplessly. He has wished for Anders, and now he finds himself wishing for Merrill. Merrill was always the best with scared children.

“Be on your way, Ser Fenris,” the boy says. He is young, perhaps ten, with dark blue eyes and a shock of dark gold hair hanging over his forehead, the rest covered by an overly large hood that Fenris suspects hides pointed ears, as if the structure of his face would not give it away. 

He lets his hands drop to his sides. “It’s a long walk to the next village,” he says. “Longer still if you’re hungry.”

“Caris,” the girl says, her voice soft. 

“We are fine, Ser Fenris,” Caris says again.

Fenris nods. The girl is terribly small, her dark face smeared with dirt and blood, one foot out in front of her. He can wait a time, going back to the dead bandits to begin picking over their belts for gold and perhaps weapons. He does not grab the lot like Hawke, but time on the road has taught him not to overlook a fine dagger or a good gauntlet.

A male and female elf lie among the ruin of a caravan, his neck slit down to bone and her hair soggy with blood. He closes their eyes and covers their faces with cloth. If he must leave the children here, he doesn’t want the ruin of their parents to be the last memory they have of them.

He can tell from the adults’ faces, the lack of markings, that the children are more than likely from an alienage rather than Dalish. If they had come from a clan, Fenris could return them to their Keeper. He could try to take them to the Alienage, back to Highever. 

If they came from Highever. 

The boy is stubborn. It takes nearly an hour for him to come to Fenris, where Fenris is sorting through the pebbles one of the bandits carried, to see if there is a gem of any value. 

“Adari is hurt,” he says, mouth very small. “And I cannot heal her.”

Fenris nods, standing. “Adari is your sister?”

“It’s her ankle, ser. Papa said you can’t heal if the bones aren’t set, and I can’t--I tried to fix it, but...”

His eyes are hot, huge in anger and perhaps a bit shiny with tears. Fenris cannot remember his father at all, and his mother is just callused hands and soft songs in his memories. The boy probably watched his parents murdered. 

“I can set a broken bone,” Fenris says. Hadriana used to delight in breaking bones and making him wait for healing. 

He is more gentle with her than he ever was with himself, using bits of the wagons to get her splinted and settled. He breaks the head from the maul--it is too heavy to carry with him, and much too rough to fetch a price--so she may use the handle as a cane, to see if she can walk on the ankle.

Adari takes one step, then another, and then she stumbles with a cry. Fenris watches the boy rush to her side, pulling one slender arm over his shoulders. 

“We’ll be okay, Adari,” Caris says, and he does an admirable job of hiding his panic.

Fenris looks at the boy, judging his strength before he hands over his pack and takes Adari into his arms. 

“I am staying not far from here. You are welcome to stay and rest, but she will need to stay off the ankle.” Adari weighs so little, her messy plaits falling out from under her too-large hat. 

He smiles at her. “Do you hide your ears out of habit, little one?”

“Mama said it was safer,” she says quietly, but she pulls the hat down. “The bandits came anyway.”

Fenris holds her just a touch closer, the walking stick abandoned. “Your brother and I will keep the bandits away from you,” he promises, and Caris is at his elbow, eyes fierce again. 

“I have to protect Adari. Mama said,” he says, and Fenris fights off a wave of memory that will serve nothing but to distract him from keeping these children safe.

***

_12 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:34_

Why is it that all the past problems seem to come home now? Feynriel is not thriving in the Dalish camps. 

Predictably, Anders and Fenris are arguing about it, as if the matter is about them. 

Men are so selfish. 

I’ve sent word that I’ll help. I hope it’s not too late. 

 

_13 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:34_

Marathari says we’ll have to go into the Fade, and Fenris reacted... as well as I would expect. She’ll be here as soon as she can. 

I won’t leave a child to become an abomination because Kirkwall has a terrible Circle.

Merrill has been keeping an eye out in the alienage, and if worse comes to worse, I need to go to Sundermount for the herbalist in the gallows.

I found a job on the Chantry board. Lothering always had work, but Kirkwall is so filled with refugees that it’s nearly impossible to find work through the Chantry. 

It’s killing bandits. Perhaps I can convince Fenris to come along.

***

It’s unsurprising that Fenris is unprepared to care for two children. He makes trips back to the massacre to find food and clothing, and once to bring the bodies of their parents to the farmhouse.

He burns the rest of the mess without ceremony, but their parents deserved to be sent off properly, even if he must wrap them tight in sheets so neither child will have the memory of what time will do to the dead. 

Adari is newly seven while Caris is not-quite ten, and they are not ill-behaved but are mourning. He is aware that he is a poor caretaker. There is hardly food in the house for him, and he must leave again to go back to the village. 

He lets them share the bed, Adari's ankle close to broken so she must be carried. She spends most of her days in the bed, and Fenris pretends he does not notice that Caris still tries to use magic on the break. 

Hawke explained once that the different between her healing and Anders'. She would need bones set and deep cuts held closed as she worked. Anders could just visualize the body whole, and it would happen. 

Instead, he washes two small dresses, tunics, and breeches in the stream close to the house and attempts to make sure at least one meal is ready at the same time every evening. 

Caris is far from impressed with Fenris. He refuses to tell Fenris where they’ve come from--”We’ll be gone as soon as Adari can walk”--or where they were going. Twice, Fenris has found him sneaking into the chicken coop for eggs.

“Adari is hungry,” he says, his chin stuck up. Fenris cannot remember being as small as either of them, though he must have been once. Caris seems to barely come up to Fenris’ waist. 

If there is one thing to be grateful for, it is that for the first time since he left Isabela’s ship, Fenris is too tired to remember Hawke’s smile. He wakes at sunrise and begins to check on the farm, letting the cow and sheep out from the barn, feeding the animals. Then there is breakfast and helping Adari out of bed so she may use the chamber pot, Caris usually waking up to fuss over his sister. Then there is breakfast, and Fenris does not know enough of planting to have a garden. 

When he goes to sleep before the fire, his body aches, and he thinks again that he should take the children to the nearest alienage, as soon as Adari might walk to Highever.

***

_16 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:34_

It was a mistake to take him into the Fade. It was a mistake to take Isabela into the Fade. I know Justice, but to have him there instead of Anders... And the Demons were so strong.

I can’t sleep now. When I dream, I remember watching Isabela’s skin turn black from fire, or the way Fenris’ eyes seemed to turn to glass when he “died,” just before he vanished into the waking world.

And had I listened to the Sloth Demon, what then? Would I have had to kill Justice too? Would he have turned into Anders?

I know the risks of being a mage. I’ve known them since I was a child, but Maker if the demons don’t seem to be getting stronger by the day.

 

_22 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:34_

Bandits are dead. I’ve made nice with the Prince of Starkhaven, apparently.

He’s a different sort of man than Fenris or Anders, but Maker, I have assembled quite the group.

I took Sebastian to meet Mother, and she liked him well enough. Of course, as soon as he excused himself for his duties, she mentioned grandchildren again.

There are far too many spiders in Kirkwall to give that up for babies.

 

_25 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:34_

Aveline has informed me that she is too busy to be my sword all the time. Surely I have another swordsman who is infinitely capable and whose arse I can’t help staring at. 

I thought we were friends.

***

Adari's ankle heals in little under a month, and whatever Fenris felt when he only had to mind Caris, it is nothing to a bounding six year old who has never even see a farm before. She loves the cow, which she names Hailan, after an old cat that used to prowl outside her room in the alienage. She loves the sheep.

She actually is pleased when Fenris asks her to get eggs from the chickens' nests and make sure that the animals have fresh water. She wants to be helpful, and while he's grateful for the work, she makes some tasks last twice as long and she has a tendency to wander off into the forests around the farmhouse. 

Caris scowls more now that Adari is well, and Fenris notices that there are packs prepared by the door. "For when we get dropped off in the city."

Fenris doesn't miss the way the color drains from Adari's face, eyes going huge. She is quiet through dinner and she doesn't ask to watch Fenris draw before she crawls into bed and drops into an uneasy sleep. Caris stays up late, but he never talks to Fenris. 

He knows that then that Adari had hoped she could stay on the farm. She's exhausting, but it's...nice, he supposes, to have her around. Caris is moody and furtive. 

He can only imagine what Varric would say to know that he's taken in an elf moodier than he is, apparently. 

It's only when she and Fenris are cleaning out the stalls, her nose wrinkling against the smell, that she asks, "You aren't going to keep us, are you?"

He pauses, because “keep” sounds entirely too much like ownership. "I would think you'd like to go back to the alienage. I know I miss the city."

Fenris has only glimpses of village life in Seheron, when he was recuperating with the Fog Warriors. Danarius was a magister accustomed to his city life, his easy pleasures. Fenris first felt free in Kirkwall, and he misses those he knew there. There are nights he debates trying to teach Caris diamond back because he misses the easy camaraderie of a card game. 

Ten is entirely too young for gambling. 

"I miss my mama and papa," she says, eyes downcast. "We don't have a house anymore in the alienage. We lost it when we left."

Fenris nods. "I lost my home too." He sits down on a bale of hay and lifts her so she may sit beside him. "Your brother never speaks of it."

Adari shakes her head. "Caris has magic. Mama was afraid of Templars. She had a sister, and she died. They killed her."

Fenris says nothing, carefully reaching over and rubbing her shoulder. She seems small and lost, her gold hair a wild mess with bits of hay here and there. Her fingers are tightening in her skirt. 

"Do you and Caris wish to stay?" Fenris asks. 

Adari bites her lip. "We can't go home without Mama and Papa. People, at home. They know about Caris. They'll think he hurt them." Tears well in her eyes. "He was good. He only used magic when I got hurt. But they'll make him go away."

Fenris is not so strong that he can ignore the trembling, high note to her voice. He grips her hand in his. “You do not have to go anywhere. You are both welcome to stay.”

He is prepared for her small hand in his, for the way her fingers tense, but he is not prepared for her to throw herself at him, acting as if he does not wear armor as she pushes her face to his chest. “Thank you,” she says, and she is a child, barely seven.

She should not be this worried about protecting her brother already.

***

_4 Justinian, Dragon 9:34_

He was embarrassed about giving in to a demon. Maker save me from this man and his pride. I would choose the only elf in Kirkwall who is more infuriating than Carver to be smitten with. 

We have it sorted though. He came with me to look for a missing patrol on the Wounded Coast today. That has to mean something. 

 

_10 Justinian, Dragon 9:34_

Sebastian is actually the only man I’ve ever met who gets under Varric’s skin. It’s fascinating. I brought them both to investigate the Harriman estate, and I’ve never seen Varric so out of sorts. I suppose he’s less inclined to appreciate another archer, but Bianca is a crossbow unlike any other. 

There’s no reason to be so snippy with him. Sebastian seems pleasant enough.

In any event, he and Fenris seem to get along fairly well. That itself is a rare and shocking event. Fenris seems to tolerate people all right, but Sebastian has this way about him. 

I’m sure if I mentioned it, I’d get the cold stare and a brusque shove-off.

 

_16 Justinian, Dragon 9:34_

Fenris was drunk; I was shocked by his tale and the look in his eyes when he talked of what Danarius made him do. 

He was drunk, but I felt... something, when he looked at me. 

He was drunk enough to say that it wasn’t the right time, but I think we agreed to have each other. 

Now to see if he’s drunk enough to remember.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like, to have that sort of despair... But to destroy an entire village because one man said so. I cannot grasp it. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like. 

Part of me is glad that Anders doesn’t know. They’re trying for a strained, snippy civility, I think, but Anders wouldn’t tolerate knowing Fenris had massacred an entire village because his master told him too, not with Justice inside of him. And I cannot blame him for his horror. If I had not heard the story from Fenris, had someone told me the tale second hand, I do not think even I could look Fenris in the eye again. 

I call myself his friend. Anders has never considered himself as such. 

Still, to carry that guilt must be terrible. I’ve known the secret only a day, and I keep thinking about it. To have nearly six years with that on your mind...

 

_19 Justinian, Dragon 9:34_

I came to his house with a fresh meat pasty that Mother “accidentally” bought, when she and Bodahn were in the market. She made some comment that surely it’s neighborly to take the excess to Fenris, as he lives in Hightown as we do. 

When I mentioned that Aveline technically does as well, she scoffed. “Aveline can eat in the barracks. You told me yourself the state of Fenris’ home.” (Never mind that when I came home, Aveline was at our table and Mother was tsking the state of the barrack kitchens.)

She is not a subtle matchmaker, my mother. I am at least relieved that she hasn’t taken to the notion that I marry a Hightown lord. 

It was good, to have a reason to come to his manor. He blinked owlishly at me when I came inside, as if I were a ghost. 

“A sane woman would have stayed away, after what I told you,” he said, and his voice was sure, sober, and so full of regret. I wanted to lay my hand over his, to tell him that I cannot understand why he did it, but that I believe he wants to be a better man, that he wants to make sure he can never be so easily puppeted into such a situation again. 

That Danarius should be killed slowly for asking such a thing.

Instead I set the pasty on his dusty table. “You are my friend,” I said. 

He has no plates, so we picked at the pasty with our hands like children and drank from the same bottle of wine. 

I’m fairly sure that’s not exactly what Mother intended, but what she doesn’t know will not hurt her.

***

Adari likes him well enough. This much is clear. She asks questions about everything. It's clear nearly immediately that she thinks he's Dalish, that she assumes that is where the markings come from, much like Merrill did so long ago. He does not have the heart to open her up to the realities of Tevinter. She has seen her home burn and her parents die. That is enough horror for a short life.

Caris is trickier. While his sister is relatively assured that Fenris does not mean to send them away, he demands that they be paid for their labor on the farm. He will not see his sister work without compensation, Maker be damned. He does not do more than attend to his sister’s needs, but she finds berries and helps set the table for meals. 

The farm--their farm, as Adari calls it--is rather sad. There are fields of grass for threshing, but Fenris knows little of what to do with it. He was a bodyguard and a mercenary, and it is only because he has acquired children that he fusses at all. 

He takes Adari to neighboring farms now, because while he knows little, someone is always willing to teach. He still wears his armor when they walk, his sword still strapped to his back, but he removes the gauntlets when they are safely at another farm. He does not trust this dangerous world they inhabit now, and he cannot help but think that some farmers call for his help not because they are so eager to teach an elf their farm tricks but because they can see he is a warrior, someone who has no issue cutting down highwaymen come to steal their livestock. 

Adari comes with him, and he thinks it makes him seem less fearsome to the other farmers, that despite his sword and fearsome appearance, he has a child to care for.

Caris says nothing of it, and Fenris does not try to make him open up. He knows well enough that the very stubborn will not budge for him. Hawke could probably make the boy open up; she worked smiles from Fenris with little enough effort. A ten year old would be no trouble. 

He sits at the table and he takes food, but he only speaks to Adari, their tones hushed and Fenris does not try to listen, only makes note of the frightened way Caris speaks at times. 

It is because Caris is a mage; it makes sense. Magic outs, one way or another, and Caris makes no effort to use his power. It is perhaps as worrisome as if Caris overused magic. 

Hawke would talk to him about the Fade, about the pull of magic that all mages claim to feel. Hawke could laugh and joke, make him feel at ease until she had pulled the truth from him. And then when the truth was so bad, even if Caris had killed a hundred men with one spell, Hawke would laugh and shrug one shoulder. 

“Oh to be young again,” she’d say, as if her father had not taught her control from the moment she was old enough to conjure a spark.

***

_10 Solace, Dragon 9:34_

Sometimes, I think about what Father would say of my friends. I do think he’d have a favorable opinion of Anders, at least at first. Sometimes Anders goes too far in his manifestos and his plans, and that scares me. It would scare Father more, I think. He would not get to know Anders like I do. I trust him. He has suffered, and he only wants to right that terrible wrong. 

Merrill, I have no doubt, would disturb him greatly, but I think they would have enjoyed discussing the different cultures and magic. Bethany would have been great friends with Merrill, and Father could never deny her anything. He’d have to come around. 

Varric and Aveline are easy. They act so much like our parents at moments, like children the next. He’d love Aveline for saving us in Ferelden--we never would have made it to Flemeth without her strong arm--and he’d love Varric for giving us that moment, that chance. Even if it cost our family Carver, we had a chance to take a better life. 

There is no way Father would trust Sebastian, and he would like Varric the better for his skepticism of Sebastian’s claims of absolute faith, at least when he’s not waffling about his birthright again.

He may not have liked Isabela at first, but I think he would come to appreciate her friendship and particular brand of loyalty. She’s just a lot to take in at times, but he would learn to enjoy her. Even Mother adores her now.

And then Fenris, who I think would give Father the most pause. Probably because of this strange dance we’re in. Father was always so careful not to tell me I couldn’t walk around the village with someone and whatever else we might get up to, but I know he worried so much about my choices.

A mage-hating former slave is a lot to worry about, even leaving aside the Fog Warriors. I cannot imagine being so hopeless as to turn around and kill everyone who had shown me even an ounce of kindness. 

Father would probably like Fenris fine, as long as I agreed to stay far away from him, and that will never happen. I need him at my side too much.

***

The fight is innocuous. Adari and Caris are supposed to be moving the cow out into their overgrown yard, so she may eat and stretch her legs. Caris is supervising. The cow is gentle, used to Adari now, and she does not need much prompting to leave the safety of the barn. If she had her way, she would probably roam free.

They argue as they have on countless mornings, and he pretends not to notice that it’s about him again while he packs up a meal for Adari and himself. He does not know what Caris eats when they are away. He suspects that some days Caris helps himself to the dried meats and fruits Fenris is starting to pack away for the long winter. Other days, he might not eat at all.

He feels the magic before either of them begin screaming. One moment Adari is shouting, “Well this is your fault,” and then the power snapping through the air makes the lyrium sing in his skin. 

Caris screams back, “Don’t say that,” his hands outstretched, and Adari’s response is lost in the roar of a fireball that hits the barn, the stacked bales of hay beside it. 

The fire is immediate, and neither child moves, transfixed. The cow runs, and the rope slips from Adari’s grasp. 

He pulls her back, too startled to be gentle, as Caris just stands open-mouthed in horror. 

“Can you make ice?” he yells to the boy, who blinks as if he is dreaming. “Caris, can you do magic other than flames?” There is water saved for their water skins, a trough of water for the animals, but it will not be enough. Fenris heaves the trough up anyway, to stem at least part of the blaze. “Caris,” he says again. 

The boy holds his hands up and he stares at the fire, and Fenris can see the terror in his face. “Try,” he pleads as he dumps the trough, and the fire sputters but that will not stop it. The barn will be lost.

But the ground quakes, and Fenris can see that the boy is trying to smother the flames with earth, a messy rain of soil spraying on all of them. He does not question it. “Good, Caris,” he says, and he tells Adari to run into the house for their pack and water skins, more to get her away from the fire than because waterskins will be of no use against this blaze. 

The dirt doesn’t move fast enough to save all of the barn; Adari will not be allowed to go into any longer, but it stands yet, open on one end. He does not know how he will find the money to rebuild it; he will not worry about that now.

Caris looks at Fenris with his blue eyes huge and terrified. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he backs up, one step and then two. “I should--I didn’t hurt anyone.”

Fenris nods. “We were lucky.” He curses himself for not paying more attention. Magic outs. Any mage who is still connected to the Fade is dangerous, and Caris is a child whose emotions are still entwined with his powers. 

Caris bites his lip, and something flits across his face that Fenris can’t follow. “I’m sorry,” he says again. 

Fenris debates reaching out to the boy, but his shoulders are curled in and he looks so fragile now that Fenris won’t risk it. “It’ll be alright. Go inside to look after Adari. I’ll tell the farms we aren’t coming today.”

Caris nods, and Fenris sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. The walk is only a few miles. It feels longer now, and he doesn’t trust the children alone. He cannot trust Caris alone. 

He will have to figure out something to do about Caris’ magic, something to keep him safe. There is no Circle left, and strangely, Fenris cannot fathom separating the children. He will have to find another way. 

Hawke would have known what to do. Fenris wishes he knew where she was, if she’s even still in Ferelden. Her journal entries still keep him centered, and he misses so many things now. Her touch, her smile, the way her nose would wrinkle when they would fight corpses on Sundermount.

Sometimes, he thinks that he only has kept the children because it is what Hawke would have done. He knows it isn’t the only reason, not really, but Hawke was an older sister. Hawke had helped care for Bethany and Carver from their birth, and she was good with children. Fenris only has faint memories of Varania from before, and none of them revolve around how his mother kept his sister’s magic secret from their master. 

“Help me, Hawke,” he whispers, saying her name like it’s a prayer. His faith in the Maker is rather strong, but his faith in Hawke is stronger.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She tries to make her smile wider, but her lips tremble violently. When he picks her up into his arms, she burrows her head into the crook of his neck. He murmurs to her in Tevene, and he wishes that he were not such a fool.
> 
> Of course the boy thought he was angry over the barn. Children do not truly understand how fragile their lives are. They can build another barn, but for all his magic, Caris cannot simply summon another sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Riversburns.
> 
> Warning for violence and use of Tranquility rite. I know this upsets some people a lot.

_23 Solace, Dragon 9:34_

Aveline has been acting quite bizarre lately. She’s been asking about Fenris more, in the way that implies we’ve done more than impotently express how much we’d like to tear each other’s clothes off.

I don’t want to push him. He was almost fragile when he told me? I mean, for Fenris, which is both more and less fragile than most people. He’d kill me if he knew I thought that.

 

_4 August, Dragon 9:34_

Everyone is friends with everyone else--well, except Anders and Fenris.

And maybe Anders and Sebastian.

And Varric doesn’t seem to care for Sebastian much.

I suppose Anders doesn’t really like Aveline, either, but I think that’s more a flagrant bending of Kirkwall law and her issue with trying to look the other way and keep her job.

My point is that if most of my friends are friends with most of my other friends, why does everything have to fall into my lap. I have enough outside work falling into my lap. My lap is quite full, actually.

I think it’s because they know I won’t say no, and I hate every one of them for it.

 

_12 August, Dragon 9:34_

I went by his house again, with a gift. I thought maybe... Well, I sort of hoped we could move forward from this rut we’ve been in. Even a shared meal can only help so much, when I’ve told him, well. And he said he’d think on it. 

Isabela says there are shops in Lowtown that will help along our problems, and Merrill says there are roots we could put in our food, to “help with those terrible jitters,” but I’m not that desperate yet.

It was just a book, so I wasn’t expecting him to ravish me or anything, though a kiss would have been lovely.

No matter what I do, I seem to poke at old hurts for him. So strange that all I want is for him to be happy. He has such a wonderful smile and laugh. 

The more I know of Tevinter, the more I want to hurt the magisters. Not just Danarius, but all of them, because as terrible as Fenris’ life was, there are always worse stories, Like when I compare Father’s old Circle horror stories with Anders’. 

Tranquil solution. Maker, I hope he’s wrong. I’m sick thinking that he’s not. He’s waiting for the right time for us to go. I think I may take Fenris, so he might see that mages have reasons to fear. 

I’m going to teach him to read. He know so much about the world. It seems wrong that he can’t read any of the books he’s stacked through the mansion.

***

In the morning, he finds Adari sitting beside the trunk where Fenris keeps Hawke's journals and the blank ones he filled with drawings, before he had two children to mind. She likes to fuss with locks, and Fenris thinks that Isabela would have loved her greatly.

He knows what she will more than likely grow to become, and he sometimes wonders if she's not too young to buy her daggers or a bow. Her skills he can help to develop, at least in a way. It's not like magic. 

"Good morning," she whispers, and her eyes are focused on the lock. She looks near tears. 

Fenris sits down beside her, and she continues to fumble. "You're awake early," he says calmly. 

"Caris burned down our house, in the alienage. He didn't mean to," she whispers. She bites her lip hard. "We couldn't go back, so Mama and Papa were moving us to Hamashiral. So we could blend in."

Fenris says nothing. After yesterday, he isn't surprised; Caris' temper would be a problem in a cramped slum. They nearly lost a barn, but a rundown house would be far worse. 

"Mama and Papa thought maybe from there they could send Caris to the Dalish. The Dalish aren't scared of magic." She bites her lip. "He would be safe there."

"Maybe," Fenris says, noticing now that the house is terribly quiet. 

He stands, turning to go to the back bedroom, where Caris should be sleeping in the over-large bed. 

"He isn't there." Adari's eyes are huge and watery. "He doesn't want you to throw us both out. He'll find the Dalish."

He stands slowly. “Adari, there are no Dalish around here,” he says. 

She frowns, and her hand reaches out. She almost touches the marks on his hands. “You have val-vallalla--”

“Vallaslin,” he says automatically. His voice does not have the lilt that Merrill’s did when she spoke elven. “I promise, I will explain. But I am no Dalish.”

He does not consider himself a city elf, either, not in the way Southerners describe that cultural divide. He is from Tevinter, raised there. He pulls his armor on, then his gauntlets. His sword is a welcome weight on his back, and he makes a quick pack for Adari, her other dress, her doll. He does not know when she will be coming back here. 

In that moment, he knows he needs to find Caris. The world is too dangerous for a young, untrained apostate. Caris is too young and untested, and there are far worse things in the world than mere execution.

“Fenris?” Adari says, her voice high with worry now. 

“I am going to find Caris,” he says, and he hugs her gently, mindful of his armor. “I am not afraid of what he is. I have seen maleficarum. I have seen a mage kill a Qunari before. Caris’ powers are untrained.”

“He wants me to have a house, and maybe have a papa again,” Adari says, and her voice is small and broken, near tears.

Fenris sighs and holds her closer. “You will not lose me because your brother is a mage. As long as you wish to stay with me, both you and Caris are welcome. I am just sorry that he didn’t realize I wanted him safe as well.” He hesitates but presses a kiss to her forehead, a small comfort. “Come now, you need to be somewhere safe while I am away. If I have to use my sword, I do not want you near.”

She gives him a teary smile. “I am not afraid of your sword.”

He tugs one of her braids. “I am. Imagine if I cut half your hair.”

She tries to make her smile wider, but her lips tremble violently. When he picks her up into his arms, she burrows her head into the crook of his neck. He murmurs to her in Tevene, and he wishes that he were not such a fool.

Of course the boy thought he was angry over the barn. Children do not truly understand how fragile their lives are. They can build another barn, but for all his magic, Caris cannot simply summon another sister.

***

_2 Kingsway, Dragon 9:34_

He’s gone.

***

Fenris tries to follow Caris' steps later, when Adari is safely tucked away at a neighboring farm. It hasn't rained in days, and he is not exactly the best tracker. He's more experienced in hiding his own tracks than he is following others'. When he was on the run, he knew better than to try to attack large bands of slave hunters.

He couldn't resist one or two traveling apart, but groups were a tricky thing. 

Caris is not particularly gifted in hiding his trail, but there is only so much he can do. Fenris will not give into hopelessness when he crosses a stream and loses Caris’ small footprints entirely, but he wishes--if only for a moment--that Merrill were at his side.

For all her flaws in character, she could track in the most maddening way. Sebastian was truly trained for it, but Merrill could tell the most intimate things about their quarry from their trail. At first he thought all her talk of the Dalish was foolishness, but he can now admit that perhaps he was a bit too harsh on some aspects of what she knew. 

Not everything, of course. The woman was still daft.

He picks the path of least resistance, because Caris is a scared boy and has never truly been on his own before. He would not risk setting a forest ablaze because he was caught in an overgrown thicket. There are voices not too far off in the woods, and Fenris silently pulls his sword from its sheath on his back. More than likely, they are harmless, but he will not be caught unaware. 

He moves quietly through the forest, furiously searching for Caris’ small prints in the mud, and a few times he thinks he sees them, the edge of his foot, a broken branch. Then the trail will go cold, and he must think like a frightened child who has no weapon. 

It seems an age before he stops by a tree, twigs and branches raining from it. He does not put his sword away but rests its tip against the ground as he looks up. Caris looks down at him with frightened eyes, and he stops climbing when he recognizes Fenris. 

“Come down,” he says, and he tries to look as friendly as he can. He understands how difficult that must be, in his full armor and with a massive sword at his side. Caris has seen him use the sword before, but only in practice. He cannot allow himself to get complacent, not when Adari and Caris counting on him. 

Caris shakes his head. “There were soldiers. I heard them, and I felt...” He shakes his head. “They did something. There was a girl, and she was crying.” Fenris can see his body trembling. 

He closes his eyes and tries not to sigh, to let himself seem as tired and frustrated as he feels. “I need you to stay in this tree, then, until I’ve looked about.”

There’s a moment where Caris makes a face, and Fenris knows he’s not going to listen. “Okay,” he says, and it’s a lie, but now Fenris can hear the crashing in the distance, swearing, and the air is alive with the burn of magic. 

“Stay put,” he says again, before he readies his sword and moves toward the sound.

It’s a camp, quickly set up but larger than he would have expected. For a moment, he sees cages and thinks slavers, skin going cold because they are too close to his home, to the children. Then the spells begins to hit and he hears the invocations of Andraste, the Maker. 

Templars.

Fenris’ fear turns to rage as he turns. There is a blond mage hanging off a templar’s greatsword, his body split open and staining the dirt with gore. He rushes forward; the templar’s armor is poorly maintained, dented with several loose plates, and his sword finds flesh easily, sliding in. His lips pull back in a smile when the templar howls and then drops. 

He does not have time to stop. There are more templars than he would have thought, and the lyrium in his skin sings when they try their magical purges. Hawke used to dread those, for the numbing sensation of her magic and mana being pushed back. It shocks a mage just for a moment, which is good because the templar is left feeling exposed and vulnerable after releasing such a push of energy. 

They recover in a blink of an eye; the mages will not. It gives them the advantage. They can wade through a group of mages with bloody swords because they have no fear of anything more than a potion knife. For all his lyrium though, Fenris is no mage. They can throw all their mana purges at him at once, and he will not back down. 

He has no reason to fear magic being dulled.

His sword flashes when he lands the blade against a templar’s neck, then another’s leg. He is not their focus, not at first. He sees the mages cowering, some sitting before others with blank eyes and branded foreheads but others flinging spells and knowing that it will do nothing.

He looks for Hawke without meaning to, and he is rewarded with a slash across his arm. 

She isn’t there. 

Then there is a rogue leaping forward, two axes in hand. There is a moment where Fenris sees dark skin and unbound black hair, and he catches himself thinking _Isabela_ before he can stop himself. 

Except that this is a man in leather and mail, and his blades gleam with a sickly green cast. Isabela prefered speed, stealth, and accuracy to poisons, daggers she should hide in her corset to throwing axes. Isabela whooped and laughed in battle, while this man is silent as the grave. 

Fenris’ arm burns, and he feints back to adjust his hold on the blade. There is no time to ask if the rogue means to fight on his side. He will or he will not, and Fenris will die or he will not. Still, it is gratifying when the man leaps to the templar at Fenris’ right.

The templar falls and the man looks to Fenris for a moment, dark eyes glittering under a mask of blood. “They all die.”

Fenris says nothing but cleaves into another templar as an answer. They have to kill them all. These templars are too close to his home, to Caris. He will not let them take him, to be locked in a cage and possibly branded Tranquil. 

There are templars everywhere, and Fenris stands in front of the tranquil mages, swinging his sword until he can feel himself flagging. Practice or no, he has become unused to battles this ferocious, but he cannot back down now. His teeth grind together. There are other tranquil dead in the cages, more on the ground here. 

Why would you neuter the mages and then execute them? It seems unnecessarily cruel, and in moments like these, he can understand why Hawke did not hesitate to stand against them. 

The battle is hard-fought, but the templars are not prepared for two combatants immune to their special tricks. There are too many mages to suppress all of their powers, and they have them on the run when a fireball sizzles past his head. 

“Fenris!” Caris cries, his voice high with panic. He has flame in his hands, and he lobs another ball at a templar. 

Just once, he would like Caris to _listen to him_. 

Two templars turn and see that he is a lone, young mage. He is a target that would be easily neutralized. The man is busy with his own templars; Fenris heaves his sword into an archer and lurches toward Caris. 

Caris’ flame sputters and goes out. He tries to call it again, but it will not come with the templars this close, the glow of their lyrium casting shadows on his terror-pale face. 

Fenris calls the markings to life as he reaches the templars, thrusting one hand into the chest of the first as he yells for Caris to run, to move, to stop staring and get out of here. 

Instead, Caris blinks but stays rooted to the spot, throwing his hands up as the second templar comes close with his sword drawn. 

Fenris reaches out, and he cannot get to the templar’s heart. He is at the wrong angle, but he reaches into the man’s body anyway, through the stomach, and this will not be an easy death like the heart is. He knows his power is vicious, bloody, but he has always gone for the heart. He feels it beat just before he crushes it. His victim dies fast; the pain does not last. 

This templar will have no such luxury.

The spikes on Fenris’ gauntlets will tear into his stomach, into his innards, spilling bile and blood into the softness of his belly. Danarius had Fenris do it a few times, as a warning, as a challenge to any magister that would dare think of Danarius as weak. Fenris was a terrible weapon, and he could do more than kill quickly.

Fenris nearly hits Caris with his sword as he drops, and he does not look to see if other templars are coming before he drops to one knee and pulls Caris close. “You cannot stay and fight them,” he says, and he can feel Caris shaking through his armor. 

The templar moans in pain, and blood bubbles from his lips. 

“Is he going to die?” Caris asks, and he sounds so lost, terrified. 

“Yes." Fenris turns now, and the fight is over. The templars lay dead and dying, and the man is putting his axes onto his back. 

Caris leans against him as the man screams. Stomach wounds are terribly painful, and none of the three mages left alive and whole move to heal him. “Can you...” He taps his hand against Fenris’ chest. “Like you did with the other one.”

Fenris runs a hand through Caris’ hair and holds him close again. “Is it important to you?” 

Caris nods. He is still scared, and Fenris knows that part of him is the fear of Fenris’ power, of what the markings have made him. He squeezes Caris’ shoulder, because while he would leave this man to die painfully for putting Caris in danger, such kindness should be encouraged when it will not cost anyone anything. 

“Turn away, then,” he whispers, and Caris does, flinching away as Fenris does as he asked. He looks the templar in the eye and says, “Know that this is a mage’s mercy and not mine when you go to the Void.”

The templar says nothing; Fenris watches the light die in his eyes before he touches Caris again. 

“I want to go home,” Caris says, and his voice trembles. This is the second massacre the child has seen in as many months, and Fenris would give anything to be sure this will be the last. 

“Let me talk to the others, and I will make a camp for you. This must be dealt with so other Templars do not follow.”

Caris clings to him when he stands. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to burn the barn. I’m sorry that I’m dangerous.”

Fenris closes his eyes and holds Caris just a little tighter. “It’s all right,” he whispers, because he does not know what else to say. In Kirkwall, he used to rail against the dangers of mages. Magic had its uses, but the cost was so high. Now he holds a young mage in his arms, and he cannot stop remembering Hawke, her strength. 

Instead he says, “I’m dangerous, too.” 

Caris laughs. Fenris will take his laughter.

***

_25 Kingsway, Dragon 9:34_

Sebastian’s task is done, and he will stay. He does not know if he will stay or leave the Chantry. We have been talking more of late, and it is a comfort. 

It is better than Aveline coming to the house at nearly one and swearing she will rip his ears off. 

Sebastian has no pitying looks. His is an easy friendship. 

 

_1 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:34_

Mother invited everyone for dinner, and most came. Aveline had patrol, and he did not come, as expected. Anders and Sebastian had a long debate about Andraste’s teachings and how it applies to mages. At first, Merrill would pipe up with parts of her own theology, but Anders was, ah, focused.

When we went for drinks in the library, they were still debating. Mother looked so chagrinned and whispered, “Remind me to only invite one at a time.”

She likes Sebastian, I think. Anders reminds her so much of Father that I imagine it’s hard to have him about. 

No one has told her about Justice. For all her time with mages and learning about our world, I don’t think she could be able to understand.

 

_10 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:34_

Orana is settling in nicely. Isabela and I took her hat shopping today, with a detour to buy her some other things to wear. Her own dress has blood along the hem. Given what’s she has said about her father, it’s rather prudent to get her a new one. 

And burn the old one. 

Isabela doesn’t understand why I didn’t give her a few sovereigns and send her on her way, but she never gave such a thing away. She’s been different lately, distant, and it’s sort of par for the course, I guess. 

I almost asked Donnic about him, when we took Orana to the barracks to talk to Aveline. I couldn’t. 

I’m not ready to hear that he’s left Kirkwall.

***

They set up camp with the surviving mages and the rogue when the templars are buried, the dead mages and tranquil set up on a makeshift pyre. They’ll burn them before they leave camp.

Fenris lingers over each dead face, and every one is not hers. He can see parts of her, her dark hair and her hands. A dead elven mage stares at him with eyes the exact color of Hawke’s, and he must close them before he helps the others lay her to rest. 

“Who are you looking for?” Caris asks quietly. He has been tasked with putting the mages’ effects in pouches once one of the tranquil has them catalogued. His eyes glisten with unshed tears.

“A mage,” he says softly, and he lifts the last body onto the pyre. “She isn’t here.”

“Be glad, ser,” the rogue says, and his hand curls around one of the Tranquil’s shoulders, a pretty young woman with dark skin and dark blue eyes. He can see the resemblance between them, though her eyes are huge and blank and his glitter with rage. “Most of the mages are dead or worse.”

Fenris turns away from the gaze of the woman. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, and his hands curve around Caris’ shoulders. The more time passes, the more unlikely it is that he will find her again. 

At least he was able to save Caris. 

The man stays away from him until long after Caris is asleep, curled against Fenris’ side on a borrowed blanket. He’ll have nightmares about this. Not for the first time, he wonders if he should build another room onto the house, to put some distance between Adari and Caris so their nightmares won’t keep the other awake. 

“For your boy,” the man says, holding out a mage’s staff. 

Fenris reaches out carefully. He has held a mage’s weapon before. Merrill’s, once, and Hawke’s on quite a few occasions, but he doesn’t like the way the innate properties of a staff react to his markings. This staff is no different, and he closes his eyes for a moment. 

“Is his mother a mage?” the man asks, and the question is not casual. Perhaps to a human eye, he and Caris look very much alike, but he doubts it.

“You know he isn’t my son,” Fenris says, as he has little time for games. Varric could have handled this smoothly, even Hawke. He’s exhausted suddenly, the day catching up to him along with the knowledge that in the morning, Caris will have questions about what he did to the templar. He’ll have to tell Caris something like the truth about his markings. 

They are quiet before the man says, “You may call me Aiden, if you’d like.” He pulls a whetstone and begins drawing it over his hand axes. 

Fenris says nothing, resting his hand on Caris’ shoulder. He’ll sleep tomorrow, when both children are home and safe. 

“I don’t think we have anything to say to each other,” he says simply.

There is another long silence, and then Aiden murmurs, “We could take him with us, if you like. I can see you’re no mage, and I have associates who would be more than willing to help him, train him so he’s no danger to anyone. His powers will only grow.”

Fenris shakes his head. He knows himself ill-prepared; he is no mage. Hawke’s journals have only given him glimpses of what it means to have that relationship with the Fade, those powers. 

But he only now has Caris back. “His sister would miss him too much,” he replies. He cards his hand through Caris’ hair again. “And even if I were inclined, it would need to be his choice.”

“If only all parents were so thoughtful.” Aiden looks over at the sleeping tranquil, shaking his head. “They were looking for our leaders. I’m merely a bodyguard, but such loss will make Parzival mad.”

“Parzival?” Fenris asks.

“I can’t risk saying more. It’s life and death for the mages, elf.” Aiden shakes his head and stands, touching Fenris’ shoulder as he goes. His hand lingers just a little too long. “If you ever need anything, the Red Wallop tavern in Highever knows how to reach me. Just ask for Aiden, and I’ll find you.”

Fenris closes his eyes so he won’t watch him leave. When he nods off, he dreams of Hawke as he never knew her, a gangly girl terrified of the power inside her.

***

_13 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:34_

My bed smelled like him for days afterward. He laid long enough beside me for that to happen, even if I cannot remember it. I woke and he had to leave. 

He sits between Isabela and Aveline at cards now, and he won’t meet my eyes. I suspect I’m not supposed to notice the red band on his wrist that looks suspiciously like a scarf I meant to give to Orana to mend. There is a pouch on his belt with the Amell crest.

Why are men so infuriating?

He was so furious that night. I wish I could kill Hadriana again, for making that pain flash in his eyes. I don’t care that he lied to her; if she’s half as terrible as I imagine, she deserved to die. She slaughtered her servants, including Orana’s father. 

Orana jumps when I slam a door, and when she dusts, she stares at the collection of staffs along my wall as if they may turn to snakes.

I don’t know what Tevinter is like, but there are days I wish I could burn it to the ground. It’s not just for the abuses Fenris has alluded to, but also for the fear that I see in Orana. They’re both so dear to me, and I would murder a hundred magisters to make them feel safe.

 

_19 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:34_

Mother has noticed that Fenris stopped coming for his reading lessons. She’s offered to take over. She’ll even go to his mansion, if he’s feeling indisposed.

She doesn’t believe me about the mess in the front hall. Fenris has blocked off most of the rooms, but I know the bodies are still inside. On warm days, you can still smell them.

Maker forgive me, but if Tevinter is so bad that such a stench never bothers him, how terrible must the smell of blood magic be? I’ve always found that it smells, particularly as the blood begins to age. I have been in caves that smell bad enough to retch, particularly the caves where hundred of innocents have lost their lives for power.

 

_29 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:34_

Aveline loves Donnic. It’s adorable and completely mad. Someday I will have to ask her the story of how she and Wesley wooed each other, as I don’t suspect I could believe anything short of an arranged marriage. Even Fenris and I are better at romance.

And he left because I made him happy. Because he remembered.

I agreed to help. I’m just as mad as she is. 

I really, truly must stop saying yes to everything. Surely some of Kirkwall’s problems don’t require my help. 

 

_4 Firstfall, Dragon 9:34_

Shock of shocks, the guardsman who looks at Aveline like she hung the moon and sun is in love with her. She’s so happy that she hums now. 

I will not be jealous. It’s not Aveline’s fault that Donnic is well-adjusted and knows precisely what he wants.

Fenris is different, and I knew that when I asked him to stay. This is my bed. I’ll lay in it.

But it would be nice not to be alone.

***

Caris does not ask about what he saw as they walk home, too preoccupied with his new “walking stick,” as Aiden tells him to call it. It is a staff for an adult human, too large for him by half, but he’ll grow into it. He doesn’t ask when they leave the staff at the farm and then go to fetch Adari home.

(He waits for weeks for the questions, but besides Caris looking up from his supper one evening and levelling Fenris with a look and a very firm, “You aren’t a Dalish elf,” he says nothing. 

“I am not,” Fenris answers. Caris just nods and goes back to picking around the burned parts of his meal.)

He pours over Hawke’s journal for lessons, for ways he can help Caris. The calming exercise works well. He and Caris go behind the ruined barn and he counts for Caris, who really has a knack for fire magic. He's not so much for nature-based spells, but he is learning. 

Unfortunately, Fenris is well aware that his trying to train a mage is rather like a mute man teaching another to sing. He can read Hawke’s words again and again for some insight to what it is like to be a mage, but he will never truly understand what it means.

Caris, for his part, does well, particularly when Fenris assures him that if a spell goes awry, Fenris won’t be too terribly hurt. 

The lessons become a family affair, Adari watching after dinner from the safety of a fence post. He thinks perhaps he will buy her a bow and arrow, in case she chooses that as her weapon. He doesn’t know enough about dual-wielding to be much help with daggers.

He will just do what he can by them.

***

_21 Firstfall, Dragon 9:34_

\- Thank you notes to the de Launcet family, Elthina, Sebastian  
\- Send word to Redcliffe  
\- Do you thank the guard for coming in full dress? Ask Aveline  
\- Tell Bodahn to lock the door; Orana has already agreed not to touch it  
\- Give Gamlen her favorite scarf for Carver. Can’t trust jewels to messengers.  
\- Call on Varric to thank him for letting us crash his room after the funeral

Do I call on him? Do I thank him. He held me most of the night, two nights after that, and when I couldn’t scream at night, he was gone. I don’t care if we ever have sex again. 

I miss him terribly. I miss his friendship. 

I need his friendship. 

 

_26 Firstfall, Dragon 9:34_

Aveline says to mourn on my own time. I don’t know what I’ve done to earn such a friend as her, even if we do but heads. Bethany would laugh herself sick to know that I’ve grown so close with the templar’s wife.

I hope there is a Maker, and that Mother and Bethany are with Father. 

They have to be with Father.

 

_30 Firstfall, Dragon 9:34_

He came this evening. We haven’t read in a while.

It’s different without Mother fussing over us, making sure we have wine or tea or cakes, but it’s familiar. 

And he’s been practicing. I commented, and he almost smiled. 

Maybe it will be all right. 

 

_7 Haring, Dragon 9:34_

I wish there was a way to say, “I’m not alone, Mother,” and to know she hears me. I keep seeing her sad smile on that pale face. How in her last moments, she did not mourn the horror of her death, or that I failed her, but that I was alone. She wanted me to be happy, and I find I’m not sure how to do that now that there’s no one to look after or protect. 

Except they won’t let me drift, and they keep showing me that there’s more to life than being the oldest daughter of Malcolm Hawke.

The house is starting to feel lived-in again, between Fenris and his reading lessons, and now Varric insists we play half our games here. Merrill comes by often with her baking that is not as good as Orana’s, but still welcome. 

Even Isabela and Sebastian seem to be by more often. 

I’m not alone, Mother. I’ll be all right.

 

_8 Haring, Dragon 9:34_

Sebastian says she knows.

***

Time passes differently with the children around, now that Caris and Adari both consider themselves "his," rather than orphans. Adari calls him Papa; Caris does not, unless they are around company.

The farm still suffers for a lack of skilled hands, but the human neighbors come to help rebuild the barn. Fenris ignores the comments on how they never met an elf any good with a hammer and puts his hand to Caris' shoulder so he is reminded to not let his anger grow out of control. The humans help build another room on the house, for payment for his work on their farm. For their friendship. 

Someday Caris will understand that humans do not mean to be such fools. Or he will not. Fenris will bear it for coin and another room on their too-small house. 

They do not go to Highever for the Satinalia celebration, and he gives Caris a ring that was in his pack with Hawke's journal. He feels the enchantment but cannot place it. It’s (hopefully) better for a mage, and its owner had small fingers like Caris. 

Caris is pleased, and Adari too with her bow and quiver of twenty arrows. 

They give him a tunic made of fine cloth, a few shades darker than as his eyes, but the cloth feels the same as Hawke's leisure robes. He should feel something for the gift. Instead he stares, his skin growing hot. 

"Thank you," he murmurs. 

It has been almost two years. Mere fabric should not reduce him to this, but he finds himself standing, moving to his room. 

Fenris takes out Hawke's journals, turning back to that first Satinalia in Kirkwall. 

He does not hear Caris come in. 

"You always read those books," he says. "Are they from before you came to Ferelden?"

Fenris studies him. He can see the man that Caris will grow into, and if he is to care for them, he cannot hide everything from them. "I'm from Seheron, in Tevinter. These books remind me of the woman who...helped me save myself."

Caris' eyes are huge and he sits on the bed beside Fenris. "Tevinter...Elves are still slaves there."

He nods. "Some escape," he murmurs, because he will never tell Caris of Danarius and Hadriana. Some nightmares can never be shared. "And after three years, they find themselves in Kirkwall."

Caris makes a sound. "Were you there? When the mages rebelled? Did you see the explosion?"

"Most would ask about the Champion." He tries to keep his voice teasing, as if these memories are nothing, but it is a wasted effort. 

Caris frowns, nose crinkling. "She was a shemlen mage. She didn't defy the Templars for our people."

Fenris shakes his head. How strange to hear her called just a mage, just a human. "She was a woman who defied the Templars because they gave her no choice. She didn't just fight for human mages, as you say. Every mage in the circle would have been killed. She was friends with an elven mage, and she saved another from being killed in the Circle before."

"So you were there. Did you fight with her?" Caris looks delighted and his eyes flick to the journals. "You and the woman who saved you."

It's then that Fenris realizes that Caris thinks Hawke's journals belonged to another elf, and he makes the decision not to tell him. “We left Kirkwall, in the chaos. We were separated.” His voice sounds as if he is attempting to swallow glass. 

“She died?” 

He sighs. “No. She had... obligations to another, someone who could not be trusted to be left alone.” He can see Anders’ face clearly, when he realized what they meant to do. 

_I do not need a minder. I am in control of him. We are one._

“It was for the best,” he says again. “I am noticeable. She is a mage.”

Caris nods. “Being a mage is dangerous right now.” He looks old beyond his twelve years.

Fenris reaches up to ruffle his hair. “I knew what you were when we met. And now you know I am not afraid of mages, particularly young boy mages who have no real training.”

“It’s different,” Caris snaps, batting Fenris’ hand away. “I have some training. You do well enough.” He looks at the far wall, because he is a terrible liar. 

Fenris puts the journals back. Some other day he will tell Caris that Hawke was the woman who helped him, that she’s human, and it never bothered him. It is Satinalia, though, and not a time for such dire thoughts. 

“Adari tells me you bought a cake while you were in town,” he says, taking off his old tunic so he may put on the new one. He can ignore the memory of Hawke pressed against him for one night. 

That makes Caris perk up. He may be on his way to becoming a man, but he still is child enough for sweets.

***

_13 Haring, Dragon 9:34_

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Isabela left. I would have helped her. She knows that. 

Varric thinks it’s her way of protecting us. Fenris made an ugly noise, and Aveline is already so angry with the Arishok. We’re going tomorrow to demand the elves back. 

Fenris and Anders are fighting again. Sebastian and Merrill, of all people, keep trying to help, but I think they make the fights worse. Anders can’t stand Sebastian; Fenris keeps spitting “witch” at Merrill like any of it makes a difference. 

It’s the mood of the city. If it’s because Mother is gone, and she can’t help soothe egos, I may scream. 

I can’t lose the rest of them. I’ve lost Carver. He hasn’t written since Mother’s death; I’ve lost Isabela. Fenris and I may never be as comfortable as friends. 

They can’t splinter apart now. I may do something drastic. I might leave Kirkwall. 

I need them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris sometimes wonders if he has gone mad, that he would so easily take mages into his home (or, mostly, his barn when it is not too cold), for the sake of the boy he has come to think of as his son. 
> 
> “Your influence, Hawke,” he murmurs. 
> 
> He allowed the woman to stay for a month, until she felt strong enough to flee Highever for the Free Marches. He does not know exactly what she taught Caris, though he asked. Caris said it was how to stop hearing the Fade in his dreams, so he could learn to ignore demons. 
> 
> Fenris did not appreciate that answer, but he can appreciate that Caris no longer spent nights awake, terrified of the Fade. Caris is happier, stronger, and he has had many screaming matches with Adari that didn’t end in flames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the beta, dearest riversburns. It's hard to believe I've almost finished posting this fic. After over a year of poking and prodding it into being, there is only one more part after this, though I may post drabbles and one-shots from this verse later. 
> 
> Thanks to you, readers, for all the kind comments and the kudos. They are so appreciated.

Adari realizes someone is sleeping in the barn before they do. Fenris notices that she takes more hard cheese and bread for her lunches than she could ever eat when she goes out to play on cold winter days. She knows not to go far, but she’s turning into quite the little hunter; he thinks she pretends at being a Dalish when she vanishes into the trees.

Caris goes back practicing harmless spells in the house--at least, harmless enough that they only keep a few buckets of snow around in case the worst happens. Fenris copies portions of Hawke’s journals, things he remembers Anders and Merrill saying about magic and the Fade, and gives them to Caris to read.

Both he and Adari are learning to read more. When they have mastered Common, Fenris thinks that perhaps the three of them can begin to attempt to decipher Tevene writing. He speaks it, and he knows some symbols from his correspondence with Varania when he thought she would come to Kirkwall just to see him. The winter will only get worse; it will be something to keep them from noticing how short and cold the days are, if nothing else. 

Except then Fenris is out milking the cow and mucking her stall, and he can _feel_ it, the sudden burst of magic.

Caris is in the house, helping Adari dress her rabbit for a stew. It cannot be Caris. 

He does nothing at first, just continues to take care of the cow, replacing her water and petting her ears. 

Then he feels magic again, and he sets the milk on the ground. He has perhaps become paranoid, enough that he keeps an old and rusted greatsword in the barn. His true blade is in the house, but the lyrium will be help enough against a mage, particularly one who keeps using magic with him in the barn.

Except when he finds the mage, she shrieks at the sight of his sword and begins to cry. She is small, smaller and finer boned than he, but she is full human as far as he can tell, her skin darker than Isabela’s and hair a tangled mess under her cloak. 

“Please, ser. I will leave as soon as the roads clear. Please, ser, I mean no harm. My family, there were bandits, and I do not--” She presses herself into the corner of the barn, hands upraised, pretending she is just a wanderer. 

He does not lower his sword, but he studies her. "You knew this home was occupied."

"I thought--the little elf girl has been bringing me food, ser. I thought she told--"

Fenris frowns. "We have enough trouble without an apostate staying in our barn."

The woman winces. "Ser, I mean you no harm. It's so cold, and I slipped the Templars following me. I have little money, but I can pay you to keep my secret." Her eyes are downcast. "Unless you won't be wanting money."

"No," Fenris says, a little too forcefully and he steps back, as if distance will banish that notion from her mind. Then he has a thought, a terrible thought that will bring danger on them all. 

But less, perhaps, than an untrained mage terrified of his connection to the Fade. Less than a mage who only knows a few elemental and nature spells because he's being taught by a warrior. 

"Have you been Circle-trained?" Fenris asks.

"I was, before the Blight--but it was--I did have a family, ser,” she babbles, and her eyes are still fixed on his sword. 

He holds up a hand and wonders how much of himself he will give for the people he loves. For Hawke he fought for mages, and he gave up the only free home he had ever known. Now for Caris, he knows that he will open his home to a human mage. 

“You may come in from the cold, if you like. I ask only that you help my...for you to help Adari’s brother.”

“The mage boy,” she murmurs, and Fenris will have to have a talk with Adari about the importance of keeping an apostate’s secrets. She wouldn’t have lasted in Kirkwall.

***

_29 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:35_

Here is Hawke, champion of Kirkwall. Watch her as she tries to sidestep marriage proposals from her mother's girlhood friends. They are erecting a statue for in her honor, and she will be armed with blade and torch, like she’s sodding Andraste returned.

Here is Hawke who can scarcely find time to go home at night, to sleep in her own bed, for all the parties and dinners. She has been to five wine tastings in a month, despite the fact that six months ago, she was a wretched dog lord with a dog’s taste for piss ale. 

Here is Hawke, who has learned to dance in the Chantry hallways, and how to enter a room. Mother would be beside herself to see me now, trying to learn to be a proper lady from the exiled Prince of Starkhaven. 

The dancing is fun, if a bit dull. Orlais--according to Isabela, who has come back, at least in body--has dances where partners press their bodies together so tight that they are almost having sex there on the dance floor.

Sebastian said she lies, but he turned nearly the same shade as his hair.

As if we’re supposed to believe that even in his “wild” days, he never got a bit... overfriendly. 

Fenris watches us dance. He has no sense of music--so he says--and he is hardly the sort that would be allowed in a fancy party. 

But his eyes do follow us.

 

_6 Kingsway, Dragon 9:35_

Isabela is leaving again. Hiding, as she calls it, but it’s leaving. 

We may have fought. Varric may have had to drag us apart. 

I just can’t lose anyone else. Why can’t she see that?

 

_11 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:35_

Another fancy party down. It appears without a viscount, the entire city is determined to dance until everyone’s feet are bleeding. 

This was a fun dinner. Sebastian came to help me with the course selection and, of course, what fork to use where. He says my wine palate is hopelessly ruined from too many Fereldan lagers. 

Strange how I can tell just how close Fenris and Sebastian have gotten, just from that. 

We sat at the same table as Meredith and her cadre of creaking, full-armored knights. She scowls so much. 

I wonder if she’s angrier that a mage saved Kirkwall, or that now that I’m the Champion the city won’t allow her to brand me tranquil. 

Someday I may even know. 

 

_30 Harvestmere, Dragon 9:35_

Sebastian is the only one “allowed” to accompany me to these parties. I know this. Because he’s a cultured prince and noble by blood, and he could have money and prestige if he took back Starkhaven. 

Funny how that is one thing to acknowledge and another to be told by a Hightown lady that she never put much stock in the rumors I was sleeping with either the elf or the dwarf. She’d had too much wine and I don’t think she realized what she meant. 

Which means, of course, that I have to drag Varric to one of these. He would have a good time scandalizing the Hightown elite, and it would be research for his next novel. 

I couldn’t subject Fenris to this. Even to make them all squirm... I couldn’t do that to him. I owe him more than that. No matter what happened, I have to be better. 

I can’t chase him away for cruel fun. He’s just started coming back for lessons. We’ll be friends again if it kills us both. I think he senses how much I need him. 

The house doesn’t smell like Mother’s perfume anymore, but I still can feel the spaces where she should be. My friends help, but I’m still alone at night. I still catch myself straining to hear her come up to my door when she can’t sleep. She used to check on me nearly every night. I was all she had left in the world, her only child that she could protect. 

I wish Carver were here. I wish he could have stayed longer in the city. I wish...

***

Fenris closes the diary again and sets it into a box with the others, one he can hide beneath the floorboards. Hawke’s words are dangerous now that their home is a stopping point for fleeing mages.

The irony may have even made Anders laugh. 

Fenris sometimes wonders if he has gone mad, that he would so easily take mages into his home (or, mostly, his barn when it is not too cold), for the sake of the boy he has come to think of as his son. 

“Your influence, Hawke,” he murmurs. 

He allowed the woman to stay for a month, until she felt strong enough to flee Highever for the Free Marches. He does not know exactly what she taught Caris, though he asked. Caris said it was how to stop hearing the Fade in his dreams, so he could learn to ignore demons. 

Fenris did not appreciate that answer, but he can appreciate that Caris no longer spent nights awake, terrified of the Fade. Caris is happier, stronger, and he has had many screaming matches with Adari that didn’t end in flames. 

But once his home was open to one mage, more came. He’s come to realize that there must be a mark on his farmland, on a fence post perhaps, somewhere that no ordinary passerby would think to look. It marks his home as safe, as sympathetic, where two women or a man and his young mage daughter may come and ask to sleep in his barn. 

It’s hard to look at chattering teeth and threadbare clothes and tell the mages to begone, that they aren’t welcome. Even knowing that there are templars in the world looking for them, he cannot help but see Hawke in their faces, Caris and Adari in the wide-eyed terror of the children. 

Sometimes they pay him in gold, but it’s usually something else. He has a farm, and there is always work to be done. The Circle-trained help Caris with spells, with another bit of knowledge that Fenris couldn’t have given him. Sometimes there are home-cooked meals or songs by the fire. 

One of them brings the a battered copy of _The Tale of the Champion_ and the rumors that the Chantry is looking for Hawke. 

Fenris begins training again, openly, where their guests might see. He does not use his markings, does his best to cover his arms when he’s working, but he makes sure that any guest coming into his home knows that Fenris is not a docile farmer. He supposes that the state of his barren fields and paltry stable of animals tell part of the story, but he is sure to tell the rest without being asked. He is a warrior; he was a mercenary. 

Fenris can stop a thief (though they’ve lost several chickens since they became a safe stop for mages), and he can protect the children. But neither of them knows he’s the Fenris from the book, the Champion’s lover. 

If the Chantry is looking for Hawke, seriously searching for her, he is sure that there’s a reward for his whereabouts. Varric wrote that he and Hawke are still together, that they sailed off into the sunset along with Isabela. If the search begins in earnest, even the Chantry has to know him to be the easier mark. His lyrium markings were described in the book, though he wears long sleeves now, and even other elves mistake them for vallaslin. 

Still, if the choice is between finding Fenris or Isabela, not even the Chantry would hope to find Isabela. But if the search is begin in earnest, even the Chantry must know Fenris to be the easier mark; 

He is certain that he will never see Hawke again, an uncomfortable ache that settles in his chest when he thinks about it too long, but he has her journals. He has the memory of her smile. 

And if he must read them in secret to let himself believe she is alive and well, then it is not such a high price to pay.

***

_Firstday, Dragon 9:37_

First Day is for proper drinking and dancing, and not for telling another fool that I’m not interested. 

This is why Lowtown will always be superior. When Isabela makes me dance, she might not keep her hands to herself, but she knows me. She’s not looking to add my name to hers. 

He was willing to overlook the scandalous gossip that I am a mage. Of all the things! Perhaps it was just a touch immature to freeze his smalls, but he seemed the sort to get handsy. And he made me late for the party in Lowtown. 

It’s the only time I see Fenris anymore. He’s been so secretive of late. If he’s not working with us, he’s taken other jobs. And he misses more games of Wicked Grace than he plays. He’s missed a week of reading, too! 

Varric and Aveline know what’s going on, I know, but they aren’t going to tell me unless they think I need to know

I am giving him space, and we are relearning how to be friends. I didn’t take advantage of him flashing his cards accidentally at Wicked Grace. He took me for three sovs and cleaned Sebastian out. 

And Varric and Isabela only took out about half of that. 

Things have been... odd, lately. He’s gone back to not meeting my eye, as if he’s afraid I’m going to ask him why he left. Or what he’s up to now. 

We’re not friends as we were. It’s more than that. It’s less than that. 

I miss him, and worse, I want him to be happy. If I can’t make him happy, than I want him to find that happiness without me. 

But by the Bride if his sudden secrecy isn’t driving me mad.

 

_10 Wintermarch, Dragon 9:37_

This city needs a Viscount. Another family fled Hightown without so much as telling their servants, and Aveline had to keep the looters away until the templars came and decided to lay claim to the contents of the home, for the future viscount. 

No one is mentioning that their youngest daughter was ten, about the age when magic begins to show, but that the templars came in tells me that Meredith is either ready to scream or the family fell victim to blood magic. I should let her know if I hear anything in my travels, as I still go into Lowtown and Darktown despite the danger.

And Meredith has sent three letters in less than a week, asking me to see her at the Gallows. 

I can’t keep putting her off. I’ll ask Fenris and Sebastian to come... and maybe Varric. 

There is no way I can risk Merrill or Anders in that viper pit. 

 

_19 Wintermarch, Dragon 9:37_

He’s looking for his sister. 

Fool man was worried I would see him as a hypocrite, for saying there was no point in trying to contact her. 

He knew I would understand, but he’s so proud. He didn’t want to make an issue of needing money to hire men to look for her or to have her come to Kirkwall.

He wants to meet her. He wants me to come with him to meet her, to be at his side. 

Fenris touched my hand, when I said I would go, when he was walking me to the door. 

I think I might still half-love him, and sometimes I think he might still have feelings for me.

We’re both fools.

***

Time passes, and he watches the children grow up. He watches Caris’ hair grow long, and the boy refuses to cut it. Adari turns from a scared girl to nearly a young woman who scolds him and Caris both when they forget to lock a door or leave the chickens in the yard. She traps food for them and strips the skins off rabbits without hesitation.

The farmhouse becomes a home. 

And then, two weeks after Adari turns nine, there’s a templar raid on the closest village. It’s the first of such violence in over a year. 

His neighbor rides to tell him, because they all know that if the village falls, the farms will burn too. They know that he can fight, and they need him to help. The templars are nothing more than marauders now, and their lives are all on the line. Fenris feels numb when he puts on full armor again, getting out the same blade he used to defend mages in Kirkwall. 

Caris and Adari pack to flee without being told, and Fenris realizes that he hasn’t hidden the journals nearly well enough, because Adari shoves them into her pack along with Varric’s book. 

She looks up when her bag is packed, and there is a softness to her eyes that says she knows, that she’s read them. But before he can decide what to say, she hugs him tight and kisses his cheek. “Come home, Papa.” 

He wraps his arms around her, and his eyes burn, mind racing with questions. There isn’t time to ask. “Keep your brother safe,” he murmurs into her hair. 

Caris has his staff, and there is nothing else to say. They have a plan. If Fenris doesn’t come home, or they think they won’t be safe, they are to flee to Highever, to hide in the Alienage as escaped slaves from Tevinter. Enough time has passed that they won’t connect the serious young man to the boy who burned his family’s house to the ground, and Adari says “kaffas” with a near-perfect accent. 

“How long should we wait?” Caris asks, and Fenris can see the smoke coming from the village in the dawning light. He knows what Templars can do.

“If I’m not home by nightfall, go. I’ll meet you in Highever.”

Caris nods, hesitating before he wraps his arms around Fenris’ neck. “We’ll be okay.”

“Of course,” Fenris says, and it sounds hollow.

If they survive this, he decides, they’re leaving Ferelden. They’ll go to Rivain or Nevarra, some place without cold winters and roving Templars. He’ll become a mercenary again, so they can have a proper house in a city. 

His neighbor, a pious man named Jacoby, says nothing when Fenris climbs on the back of his horse. Jacoby only has a hand axe and an old shield from the civil war, the one his father carried. His arms are thick from hard work, but he has no armor. Fenris has no illusion about what will happen to Jacoby if the Templars plan to fight. 

“Your family is safe?” he asks, when they’re out of sight of their homes. 

“Rikka took the boys and the wagon out at first light. She’s making for Redcliffe, then Gwaren,” Jacoby says, and his voice hardly wavers. 

If Fenris weren’t holding onto him to stay on the horse, he might not even think the man was terrified. As it is, he only shakes a little. 

“Is there a militia formed?” 

“Just outside town. It’s going to be a tough fight. We’ve a few Blight veterans, but not enough. If you’re good enough for the King’s Army, they take you to Denerim for proper training now.”

Fenris nods and says no more. It takes less than a hour to ride to the village, and the sooty air becomes harder to breathe. Most of the town has been burned to the ground, and the choking smell of charred flesh reminds Fenris too much of the last fights in Kirkwall.

They hear the fighting far too early, and Fenris can feel the hum of magic in the air. His markings blaze to life before he can think to stop them, on instinct, on the feeling of so many unknown mages fighting. 

The horse nearly rears, Jacoby shouting in surprise, and Fenris feels like a fool. “Sorry,” he says, sliding from the horse before Jacoby can stop him. He draws his blade as he moves closer to the fighting, to the fighting templars. 

One of the mages whirls on him, and he can feel the heat of his fire before Fenris swings out at a templar rushing in. “I mean to protect my people,” Fenris says, because he can think of nothing else that would make the mages see him as a friend.

He doesn’t think of himself as Ferelden, but this village, these people, have allowed him to stay in the farm when they knew he was not the humans who bought it. They let him raise Caris and Adari, and he is not so confident in Caris’ control to believe that no one ever suspected one of the children was a mage. 

He will fight for them, and for the children. 

His words seem to work on the mages, between that and how he and the rest of the villagers attack the templars, despite most of them being nothing more than an annoyance to a trained warrior. He begins to move himself between the more obvious lost causes, the unarmored men and women fighting with pitchforks.

The mud and grass of Ferelden scratch against his legs as he fights, glad at least that his paranoia over mages in his home kept him practicing, kept him performing the battle dances that he cannot remember learning. He thinks, wildly, of Varania and the boy Leto must have been, of how the boy sacrificed himself on the hope his mother and sister could have a better life. 

He would do it again, for Caris and Adari. 

Fire and electricity scorch the air, and some of the villagers fling burning bits of wood at the templars. It makes it hard to breathe, harder to see, and he isn’t surprised when a steel sword falls on his arm, cutting him fast and deep. It is not a killing wound, but it makes him wish he knew how to make healing potions.

“Kaffas,” he hisses, swinging out and cutting down another templar. 

Another fireball lands to his side, catching the grass on fire, and he takes the risk in the smoke and confusion to crush two hearts, swift and deadly. Blood sticks to his hands, sinew in his gauntlets, but when that smoke has cleared, he can see the battle turning. 

More templars lay dead and dying than farmers and mages. Those who have fallen are being picked off by younger girls and boys, sharp daggers in their hands. There will be no quarter for the soldiers who tried to sack the village. 

Fenris doesn’t care. The ground is littered with templars, yes, but there are also good men and women in the mud, people who just wanted to be safe. When he sheathes his sword, he is not surprised to find that Jacoby is among them, his middle slashed open. 

He closes the man’s eyes for him. 

The mages pull back almost as soon as the fight is over. They’ve lost the least amount of people, as none of the templar warriors broke the line to cut through the main body of their force, but they are still apostates facing a small force of armed men and women who have no reason to grant them mercy. He knows they are debating if they should just kill the lot to be safe, so no one will know that there are mages in this part of Ferelden, or if they should just flee because they have left their hoods up, faces obscured.

Fenris stares at them and realizes that under the loose and threadbare robes, some of the “mages” wear armor. He can see the bows on the backs of some, swords on others. One mage has their hands at their belt, and Fenris remembers Isabela’s hands hanging like that, when she thought she might need her daggers. 

And then he sees the dark-haired man who helped save Caris, just as the man sees him. 

“A friendly face at last,” the man says. Fenris stares, because he cannot remember the name. A-something. 

“I thought you would have moved on,” he says, looking over the mages who turn away, who strive to keep their faces shaded from the farmers. 

“Still so friendly, Elf,” the man says, and he claps Fenris on the shoulder without warning. For a human, it’s startling how much he reminds Fenris of Varric in that moment, despite the fact that none of his compatriots in Kirkwall would have never touched him so carelessly. 

Fenris looks over at his neighbors again. “I confess I don’t remember your name,” he murmurs. “But you know that you’ll need to get these mages moved before the villagers come to their senses. Such a large group will undoubtedly attract more templars.”

“Aiden.” And that was the name, yes. The man grins again, and he has scars on his face Fenris does not remember. “And we already have a contingent following us. These bastards were their advance troops, so sure your village had offered us safe passage.”

“Ah,” Fenris says. “While many of my neighbors haven’t mentioned an animosity for magic, they...”

Aiden smiles. “We’ve been moving groups of mages into the Wilds for years now. There isn’t a farm from here to Denerim that’s opened its doors to the large groups, nor do I expect them.” His lips quirk, and Fenris knows then that Aiden is at least aware of the haven his own farm has been. “One or two, sure, but it’s easier for us to move between our camps. Safer.”

Fenris nods. “Will you keep moving, then?”

“We have a camp some miles from here, deep in the woods. Some of our scouts have broken off to make sure the main settlement of templars is dispatched.” Aiden motions to the mages with him. “These are the apprentices, the oldest ones we could spare in a fight. The younger children are hiding with the Tranquil. I couldn’t let the town burn on our account, not if we want people to see us as better than the templars.”

There is a murmur from the farmers behind them, and Fenris steps closer. He whispers, “I know you are aware of my farm. If you need help, meet me there tomorrow evening. I have to help these people with their dead.”

Aiden nods, and Fenris watches him slide a hand into his robes, pulling out flasks of smoke. “We’ll be moving on, ser,” he says, for the farmers. “Andraste keep you, and my apologies for the templars.” 

The smoke isn’t what hides the group, not really, but it distracts the eye so no one can see where the cloaking spell comes from. Fenris can see the edge of the magic because he is looking for it, but from the cries of his neighbors, he is the only one.

***

_10 Guardian, Dragon 9:37_

The house is so quiet now. Bodahn has all but told me that he’s leaving, and I have half a mind for him to take Orana. This city isn’t safe anymore. 

There was a fire in Lowtown. No one knows what happened. Varric thinks the Templars burned a family out for harboring mages. The official word will probably be blood magic. 

Some nights I sit by the fire, and I think I can hear Mother humming. I miss her terribly, especially now. I can’t leave Kirkwall behind, not with everyone here, but there are moments where it’s so clear that I’m going to fail someone again, like I failed Bethany and Carver and Mother. Someone else’s blood will be on my hands because I was too late.

Maker, sometimes I feel I’m trying to swallow my own heart. 

 

_11 Guardian, Dragon 9:38_

Fenris came by with wine. 

He may not love me, but there is something so soothing about the way he reads. He’s reading so well now that I would never know he only just learned, until perhaps he tried to write me a letter. His penmanship and spelling still leave much to be desired.

I don’t know how he knew I needed him, but he stayed and read to me until his voice gave out. 

There’s a distinct chance I didn’t stay awake for all of it, but I was awake enough when he finished the book and drank the rest of the wine, his voice raspy from talking all night. 

I know it was Fenris who found a blanket for me, as Orana would have relit the fire. Bodahn would have woken me to get to bed. 

But he stayed. He took his wine and slept on the other sofa.

 

_24 Guardian, Dragon 9:38_

His sister is at the Hanged Man. We’re going tomorrow. I’ve never seen him so excited, in his very serious, grumpy brooding way. 

I hope she’s lovely, or at least more pleasant than her brother, though it’s hard to believe anyone could be purposely less agreeable than Fenris.

***

Fenris packs his own bags when they return to the farm, because he is no fool. The village will look for a reason to explain the templars coming to the town. Some of them have to have seen Fenris use his markings. It doesn’t matter how much good he and the children have done. They will say he is the mage, because they do not understand. Some humans believe all elves still have magic, because they also believe elves can feel the weather with their ears or steal children to sacrifice.

And if he is not a mage, he’ll still be blamed for bringing mages so close to the town, and if they find that Caris is a mage, things will go badly. 

Fenris has no illusions of how hard he’d fight to keep the children safe, and now he’s seen how woefully unprepared the farmers and villagers are. He would slaughter them. It would hardly be a fight.

But in the fighting, Caris and Adari could be hurt. 

His pride isn’t worth it. They will flee. 

Fenris waits three days for Aiden to appear, three quiet days where he and the children do not go out. Adari packs and unpacks their belongings, each time managing to fit just one more thing into their bags. Fenris sharpens his sword and watches Caris call flame and frost into his hands. 

_Fire one two three. Ice one two three. Lightning one two three._

On the third day, Fenris begins to move things around in the farm. He lets the cow and goats into the fields, the chickens chased away from their coop. They’ll burn the farm when they leave, giving no one the chance to follow. 

He’s in the barn when Aiden comes, stacking hay so the fire will spread fast. It will be dark soon. They’ll run when the moon comes up.

“Elf?” Aiden says, and Fenris glances at the man and the hooded mage on his right. “Can we talk?”

“Of course,” Fenris says, but he doesn’t stop moving the hay. He is vaguely aware of the mage, aware that the mage has gone absolutely still. 

“This is Parzival,” Aiden says, as if that name means something to Fenris. He remembers that it’s the name of Aiden’s leader, something about mage freedom. “I told him what you did for us and he--”

“I heard you’d joined with the Templars,” Parzival says, his voice cold with an educated lilt.

Fenris turns then, because he knows that voice. His throat is tight. It has been years, but he could not forget it. He could never forget it. “I did. Until they tried to hurt a woman who did good for her village. And then I slaughtered them.”

“Yes, I heard that too.” The mage pulls his hood back, and Fenris will not step back. He stares into Anders’ cold amber eyes and does not flinch. 

Three years, and Anders looks nearly as Fenris remembers him. He’s grown a beard, and his hair is shot through with white. He’s thinner, somehow, with a scar running under one eye. But he’s still the insufferable ass he was in Kirkwall, pompous and superior.

Strange that Fenris has the strange relief at seeing him. 

“You... know each other,” Aiden says slowly, and there’s a hitch to his voice.

“Not as you think,” Anders says evenly, without breaking eye contact. “We were not friends.”

“No,” Fenris says. “Never friends.” He cannot help the way his lips quirk, the harsh smile that’s forming. “But you looked for me.”

Anders licks his lips. “After the fight with the templars, you disappeared. We thought--I thought... You’re not exactly easily missed.”

He’s talking about _Hawke_. Hawke thought he was dead. Hawke is probably furious with him for ever joining Templars to fight, and she’s right to, but Fenris looks at Anders and realizes that if Anders is here, Hawke is probably close at hand. Hawke has been moving through the area, and he had no idea.

“Is she alright?” His voice has gone rough, strained. He had given up hope of seeing her. He reads her words enough that he could recite them, but seeing her seemed impossible, a fantasy that he would be a fool to consider. 

Anders nods, but he is smiling. “You know Hawke.”

Fenris has to lean against the wall of the barn. “Is she close?”

“Yes. Aiden and I were coming to thank you, and to offer--Aiden says you have been caring for a mage.” Anders sounds so suspicious, perhaps even a little outraged. 

“Caris, yes,” Fenris says, and he meets Anders’ eyes again. “He and his sister... it's been years, now.”

Anders looks away now. “If you want, we have a camp some miles from here. You could bring them there.” He looks pained for a moment, then furious. “Give us your word that you won’t harm anyone there. The mages are my charges, and I won’t see them harmed by you.”

He sneers the last, the same vicious way he used to call Fenris “savage” and a hundred different things when they fought with each other. It is so easy to fall back into pattern, to rise to the challenge in that tone, and Fenris has never been _that_ good of a man.

“If there was a fight, my children would be harmed,” Fenris snaps back. He steps closer to Anders, and he had forgotten how tall the man was, taller than nearly every human Fenris has ever known. He will not be cowed. “I don’t care if you never trust me, mage, but trust that.”

Anders hesitates. “Your children? Aiden said--”

“We both know that a family is more than blood,” Fenris whispers fiercely. There are a thousand things unsaid in the look that passes between he and Anders, what they all were to Hawke by the end, what that made them to each other. They hated each other, but for her, they tried to be civil, to be her family when all seemed lost. 

“I know,” Anders whispers, and his lips quirk in almost a smile. 

Fenris lets his shoulders relax. “They needed me, and I needed them.”

There is no more to say.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris tries to hide his disappointment in the camp, in the collection of fighters and mages. She is not among them. He strains to hear her laughter, her off-key singing, but it is like the entire camp is hushed, muted and somber. 
> 
> Hawke isn’t here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has cheered me on and left a comment or a kudos to this fic. I wanted to try and write a little something extra to add to this verse, because your kindness means so much to me, but alas. My wrists are bothering me, and work has been encroaching on my free time. When inventory is over, though, look out. Thank you again for reading and for making this fandom so welcoming. (And I will respond to comments soon.)
> 
> Thank you to riversburns for the beta, and to loquaciousquark for the prompt that led to this fic, and to crazydrock for listening to me whine about how long this fic was, as it is the longest thing I have written since my thesis. I cannot believe this fic is over now.

_26 Guardian, Dragon 9:37_

His sister is not lovely. 

She’s... something. We don’t know where she’s gone, but I think she’s not likely to come back. He nearly killed her, and--Maker help me--I nearly let him. For a moment, I was furious because he was so hurt, so betrayed, and she is his family, his only family. 

She called him Leto. His name was Leto, and she knew him as a child.

And she brought Danarius into Kirkwall, where Fenris was supposed to be safe. 

He came here, and I have never seen Fenris so pale, so terrified. For all that he’s moved on, Danarius appears, and it was like--

On the ship here, a sailor had too much to drink. He fell overboard, and he laughed as the others tried to get a rope to save him. Carver and I had snuck above board. We could see the man laughing. 

Then he went quiet and we watched the water cover him, for moments at a time, then longer. And longer. 

He drifted from the boat, but then made one last push, like this was going to be enough. This would keep him from drowning. 

But he knew he was dying. I can still see that horrible, hopeless look on his face, when his smile had slid away and his eyes were closed.

When Danarius came down the stairs, Fenris looked like that drowning sailor. If he had come alone, I don’t know that he would have fought to get away, not with the betrayal of his sister so fresh and new. 

Isabela joined the fight, of course, and Varric, but. If I hadn’t been there. If Aveline hadn’t called out for Varric to come here right now...

I haven’t seen him. I’ve been to the mansion, but the door is locked tight and he hasn’t taken the wine that Isabela and Merrill have been leaving on his doorstep. He isn’t ready to talk, yet, and I’m not ready to make him. 

I need to write to Carver.

 

_3 Drakonis, Dragon 9:37_

The wine is gone from the stoop, and Aveline reports that Fenris came to the door personally to send Donnic away. Though he took the lovely meat pie Donnic made for him, so clearly he isn’t content to waste away. 

I think tomorrow Orana shall bring him a proper dinner, and I’ll ask her to see if Fenris wishes to talk to her, with express orders that I don’t want to know what they talk about.

 

_4 Drakonis, Dragon 9:37_

Orana was not welcome inside, but she left the meal. 

And brought home a terse note of “thank you Hawke” on the most abysmal scrap of parchment I’ve ever seen. 

Maker’s breath, I think he may have taken that paper off one of his corpses. They’re far too mummified to put up a fight now. 

 

_10 Drakonis, Dragon 9:37_

Sebastian--Sebastian\--picked the lock and let himself in. Isabela and Varric have been dying to do it, and they managed to keep their hands to themselves because Fenris seemed to want his space.

It’s always the quiet ones.

Fenris didn’t hurt him, and instead they talked! Fenris is going to come to our game of Wicked Grace in a few days. 

Isabela found out and rushed over there. I should wait.

 

_14 Drakonis, Dragon 9:37_

He asked me to help him with the drinks, and when we left the room, Fenris touched my arm and asked me to come by in the morning.

I am going to write this now, so I can come home after this meeting and remind myself that I am not disappointed: We are friends, and he values this friendship.

***

Fenris tries to hide his disappointment in the camp, in the collection of fighters and mages. She is not among them. He strains to hear her laughter, her off-key singing, but it is like the entire camp is hushed, muted and somber.

Hawke isn’t here. 

Aiden sees that he and the children have a tent to themselves. Anders vanishes from the camp before Fenris can press the man for more information about Hawke, about Justice. He has to know how safe Anders is. 

It’s probably why Anders leaves without so much as a goodbye. 

They are situated at the edge of the camp, nearly into the forest. The other mages give them a wide berth, except Caris. Two minutes into the camp, and a pair of elves close to Caris’ age come to visit. 

“Go,” Fenris says, before Caris can ask. “Stay close to camp, and I want to see you before sunset.”

He does not plan to stay, not if Hawke isn’t here and not if he has to live under Anders’ eye, but the way Caris seems to light up at seeing other mages... it does give him pause. 

Adari is less enthused. “Are we always going to have to sleep on the ground?” she asks, once Caris is gone. 

“For now, until we can find a new city to stay in.” Fenris is not thrilled at the idea of living in an alienage, of having a tiny hovel with no real security and a half-dozen dangers just outside your door. “Or another farm.”

She frowns and picks at her dress. “You know Parzival, don’t you,” she says, and her tone is soft. “He’s from before, from the diaries.”

He turns to Adari, and she is biting her lip, head bowed. “How much have you read?” he asks, angry in one moment, embarrassed the next. There are things in those journals that Adari is too young to read about, things a girl should never know about the man she’s decided to call “Papa.”

“Not so much. Caris said that you were in the city with the Champion, and I had just read the book. There’s a Fenris in that book, and I thought, well...” She tugs at her braid. “And you always hide those journals when you think someone might read them, so I knew they have secrets. I like secrets.”

“Adari,” Fenris groans. In all his preoccupation with Caris, what Caris needed to learn, the training he had to have to keep him safe in the Fade, Adari had become less immediate a concern. Fenris could coach her how to wield a dagger or fletch an arrow because he had seen those being done. Sebastian and Isabela had been his friends for years.

He hadn’t realized he left her alone enough to let her slip into his room and peek beneath floorboards, but he had known Isabela and Varric. A rogue’s sense of personal space and privacy is often tenuous at best. 

“I just... wanted to know,” she whispers. “You never looked at anyone that came to stay, mage or not, so I thought maybe she died and you were being kind to Caris.” She bites her lip again, but then she squares her shoulders and levels him with a look that he is shocked to realize is one of his own, as if she has spent time practicing in looking glass until she had it right. “Marian is human. Caris said she was an elf.”

“Caris assumed she was an elf,” Fenris says, and he sits on Adari and Cari’s bedroll. “Her being human didn’t matter to me.”

“Do you still love her?”

Fenris sighs and reaches to take one of Adari’s small hands into his own. “Hawke is the sort of woman you can’t forget. When you’re older--”

Adari groans. “I hate when Caris says that. ‘I’ll understand when I’m older.’ I want to know _now_.”

He decides not to press as to what Caris could possibly know that Adari didn’t want to understand. “When you’re older, I hope that you have a chance to know someone like her,” Fenris says clearly. “Someone who makes you want to be better. I am a better man for having known her, so much better that I don’t think you would have liked me before.”

Adari smiles, but it’s sad. “You were very rude when you met her,” she says, with a child’s absolute certainty. 

“I had reasons to mislike mages, little one. And she was a mage.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Adari whispers, “If she weren’t a mage, would you have stayed with her?” Then, softer still. “Do you wish you had?”

The questions hit Fenris like a blow. “I left her side for her safety, and for mine. My markings make me hard to miss, and we none of us were safe after Kirkwall. So we separated.” He slips his arm around Adari. “It seemed like the best idea at the time, but I missed her terribly. Some days I wish I knew where she was, but if I had stayed with her, I wouldn’t have found you or your brother.”

Adari leans her head against his shoulder. “I miss my parents,” she whispers, “but I’m glad to have you.”

He kisses the top of her head, listening to her breathing until she fell asleep. 

There is nothing more to say, not until Caris bursts in hours later with a declaration that there will be stew by the fire and one of the older mages is going to teach him how to lay a frost mine for a trap. He is flushed and happy, and Fenris can’t remember seeing his smile so wide. It makes him think they can stay another week, if it will make Caris so happy. 

Frost mines and the like are very, very useful, if nothing else.

***

_17 Drakonis, Dragon 9:37_

We are not friends. 

I have spent the last two days in the most disgusting mansion in Thedas, and I do not care. I don’t care that his bed is just a mattress on the floor, that the rooms are chilly. That I had to go to the kitchen and the water closet wrapped in the scratchiest blanket I’ve ever encountered, ones that made Gamlen’s blankets feel like the finest satin. 

Because he loves me. 

He did not say so, not in so many words, but honestly: “Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you” is more than I thought I would ever have. 

Maker, that man. 

I’d be there still, but Orana came to the Hanged Man to look for me. She was worried, and I said I would be home.

Isabela was just helping Orana, when she picked Fenris’ lock and crept up to his room. Of course it was just politeness that she didn’t announce herself, not until Fenris saw her. 

She has now taken great delight in imitating my yelp for all our friends. 

I will find a way to repay that lovely, gracious woman. 

 

_9 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:37_

Days are spent trying to keep this city from eating itself alive. 

Anders is not himself. Aveline’s temper is frayed. Even Varric seems to be buckling under the strain. 

When Fenris comes here, we have dinner and retire like respectable people, but more times than I can count, I’ve been called on by Concerned Parties about the mess of the city. As if I'm going to help the nobles oust Meredith in my dressing robe. 

I much prefer his mansion, with its corpses and dust and weird black stains. No one respectable would dare step foot inside, and the non-respectable sort understand that sometimes Champions need to attempt to make up for three years.

As bad as things are in this moment, I wish time would just stop. I wish we could have another six months of nothing changing, because for the first time since Mother died, I could lose something. 

Meredith could take my mansion or my freedom at any moment, and I’ve known that for years. And I’ve always known that Anders wouldn’t let that happen. 

I even knew that Fenris would help free me, even at our lowest moments. 

But now this city could take Fenris from me when I only just found him again. 

That can’t happen. 

 

_16 Cloudreach, Dragon 9:37_

I have a cousin! Her name is Charade, and she’s perfectly lovely, in a sarcastic and bitter sort of way. Gamlen seems taken with her, and as happy as I can remember him being. I hope they’re happy.

She plans to visit often, but I’ve given her some gold, in case. 

Everything is "in case" now. Gold in case Kirkwall collapses under the weight of Meredith’s boot. Gold in case one of the nobles decides to fight the templars to become Viscount. 

Charade has money to make sure Gamlen will be safe in Tantervale, as well as Orana, Sandal, and Bodahn if they don’t escape to Orlais in time. 

If the worst happens, I want my family cared for and protected, those I can protect. I know that Aveline will fight to her last breath for this city. Varric loves Kirkwall. 

Anders won’t run anymore, and Merrill has a duty to the elves here now. 

Fenris won’t leave me.

Which leaves Isabela, and the lovely boat I helped her procure. 

 

_Summerday, Dragon 9:37_

The city is too hot again. I’ve been at the docks for the past few weeks. 

Isabela is hiring a crew, and she’s preparing to set sail, as soon as she has the notion to. Or as soon as we need to flee. 

I’m taking supplies to the boat for Fenris and I as soon as I’m done writing (if I can take nothing else from Kirkwall, I want my journals, or else Varric may publish them. I know he’s working on a book about this mess already). I gave hints to Varric and Aveline. 

Aveline won’t leave, but Varric gave me two satchels: one for him and one for Merrill. I didn’t ask if Merrill knew she was being packed up on Isabela’s ship, but I get the distinct impression that it was a case of “What Daisy doesn’t know? Will keep her alive.”

I don’t know what to do about Sebastian and Anders. Anders is--there’s something wrong, and we know it. We all know something isn’t right, that something is coming, and I think Anders is involved. 

Maker help him. I hope he isn’t going to get himself killed. 

I hope he isn’t going to make it impossible for Sebastian to ignore him, because if Sebastian turns Anders over to Meredith, I will kill Sebastian. I’ll regret doing it, but there are some betrayals you can’t overlook. 

Please just let us get out of this city in one piece. Please. Andraste, you’ve never done shit to keep my family safe before, but if you could manage, just once, to do something, I’ll sing the chant every day for the rest of my life.

***

They stay at the camp for nearly a month. He means to leave every morning when he wakes on cold, hard ground, disappointment making each ache and pain worse, but Adari finds friends among the children of the mages. Caris has a teacher, an enchanter with rigorous discipline and an eye for technique, and he has a mage boy, Pim, who makes Caris smile.

Fenris tells his back that it will have to get used to the ground again. He can pretend he has returned to the Wounded Coast. 

The camp is rarely quiet, mages coming and going. Some stay here and plan to stay here, some see the camp as a place to stop before moving south, towards the Wilds where Templars won’t dare chase them. He groans and tries to cover his head with the small pillow he uses. 

When the tent flap opens, he grumbles, “It is too early for lessons,” to Caris, because he knows that he intends to meet at the large campfire.

“Pity,” she says, her voice like a cool wind. His skin runs to gooseflesh, and he strains to hear her over the rush of blood in his ears. “I was hoping that you’d teach me that fisting trick.”

Fenris cannot roll onto his side fast enough. The tent is too small, his bedroll too confining, and he feels lightning-struck when he looks at her. Hawke is much the same, a few more lines around her brilliant blue eyes, a few more silver strands in her dark hair. 

Her smile is the same, even with her lips trembling. 

He kisses her, because the tent is too small to get his arms around her, to pull her to him as he wants, but he cannot let another moment go without touching her. He has to touch her and be sure that she is real, that he hasn’t finally gone mad for the want of her. 

“Fenris,” she whispers, when they part, and he can hear the tears in her voice. 

“Let me see you,” Fenris murmurs, and he grips her hand as he crawls from the tent. 

He may never let her go again. 

She lets him lead her away from the tent, into the trees and underbrush where there is some semblance of privacy, and she kisses him then, her hands fisting in his tunic. “I thought you were dead,” she whispers against his mouth. “I thought--”

Fenris presses his forehead to hers, his arms around her waist. She is warm and soft, her hips wider than he remembers, but so much the same. She fits against him, and when he looks into her eyes again, he realizes that he had forgotten that she is taller than him in her boots, with his feet bare in the Ferelden mud. 

Somewhere, there is an apology, an attack that waylaid her because they were pinned. She has been fighting to get here, and she is so sorry. She was sure he would leave; she would have left. There is more to it, but he does not listen. Hawke is in his arms again, and he doesn’t care if she had to battle all nine Old Gods so long as she is here with him. 

“Never, Hawke, not until I saw you again,” he whispers. He does not cry, has not been able to since before he can remember, but the threat of tears makes his voice thick, heavy with all the things he has wanted to say to her. 

“Stubborn,” she says, and she’s crying again, holding onto him with bruising force. 

They stand together as the camp begins to wake up. It’s not enough time, not enough privacy, because he hears Caris calling for him far too soon, then Adari.

Hawke pulls back, and she rubs at her eyes. “Shit,” she whispers. She had been wearing kohl, but she’s cried most of it off, making her eyes bluer than even the Waking Sea. “Anders said--I wanted to look presentable when I met them.”

He laughs and pulls her hand into his. He presses an easy kiss to her fingertips. “It’s all right,” he whispers. “They’ll love you.”

She grips his hand so tight he feels the bones shift. “I can’t believe you adopted children without telling me,” she says, as if that is the most shocking thing to happen in their time apart. 

“I took them in because you would have,” he says, because he still finds that he has borrowed her goodness, that he would still be a hard, cold man if he had never met her. 

He would be dead if he’d never met her, either by Danarius’ magic or a slaver's blade.

She kisses him again, a quick brush of lips as they step out of the forest. “You took them in because you are a good man, Fenris. Never forget that.”

“Not _that_ good,” he says, because they both know that he has his limits, his blind spots that she has to help (or force) him through. 

“Noble, then,” she says. She kisses him one last time before she steps out of reach, mischief in her smile. “Now show me your children so I can show you mine.”

Fenris looks at the children who are already awake, some attached to mages who could be their parents but most clearly being fostered. He takes her hand and squeezes it lightly. “Who have you taken in?”

“No one,” Hawke says, and now her eyes dart around, tongue darting out to lick her lips. He watched her face for years, and he knows when her nerves are failing. “I’ve been too busy with our daughter.”

Fenris drops her hand, his skin cold and hot at the same time. He wants to say something, to yell for the risks she’s been taking, to curse the years he missed and the time wasted. But there is no air to breathe, his tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth. The sounds of the camp vanish, except for his desperate breathing and the way Hawke keeps saying his name.

They have a child, and he had no idea.

“Take me to her?” he croaks, when he can find the words again. 

Hawke takes his hands in both of hers. “Of course, Fenris.”

***

_12 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:37_

I must confess that I have always hated sailing. It’s better above board than in the rolling hold, but the sea is flat and grey. 

We can’t see Kirkwall anymore, not even a plume of smoke.

Aveline is still there, and I think even Isabela prays every day for her safety, for Donnic’s. 

Anders stays below deck, with the handful of mages we were able to smuggle from the city, and I can’t even look at him without remembering the flash burn of the explosion. Hightown was in flames when we left Aveline at the docks. She had to get back there. 

Thank the Maker that my house was empty. I wouldn’t have been able to leave the city if I thought Orana or Sandal were trapped inside. 

Thank the Maker Carver had come to the city and taken Perry for a walk when I wasn’t home. 

(I’m still bloody furious with Andraste though.)

We couldn’t make it to Gamlen’s in the fighting. When we stop for supplies, I’ll send word to Charade, to hope that if he survived...

I hope he’s alive.

Carver says he’s a tough bastard. Nothing will kill him, but Carver hasn’t been home for years. He didn’t see how frail Gamlen became after Mother.

 

_21 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:37_

Merrill and Varric are leaving at the next port. 

Carver is going with them, and he’s taking Perry. 

I don’t know if he plans to go back to the Wardens, but I do know that Perry is getting too old to keep on with me. He knows, of course, because mabaris always know...

He’s a Fereldan dog, though. He hates boats. Carver will keep him safe, and he’ll keep Carver from becoming reckless. 

Isabela said we’re all welcome to stay as long as we want, but the mages are getting restless. 

Anders wants to go with them, and Maker help me, I don’t know if I can let him go alone.

I’m still furious, but I know what he meant, why he did it. 

But if I go with him, we’d never be safe, not from Justice and not from the templars. 

I keep seeing Sebastian.

There are already rumors that Starkhaven is under siege. He’s going to raise an army to go after Anders. 

Kirkwall was easy. I think I miss it.

 

_23 Bloomingtide, Dragon 9:37_

When I was small, before Carver and Bethany were born, Father left us for a year. I don’t remember much of it, aside from Mother’s tears. There were mage hunters close, and he had to choose between keeping Mother and I safe and his own happiness. 

Every time we had to move, he told me how hard it was to kiss Mother goodbye, promise me that he’d be home in the morning. He made a sacrifice for us, because he wanted us to live. 

I always hated that story, because it always meant something was about to hurt. When he lay in bed, wasting away, he told me that story, and he told me that he hoped I never had to tell my children a story like that, that I would have to go such a long time without seeing my children or my lover. 

We all know that story. When Carver held Mother after Bethany’s death, he told it to her. It wasn’t the right story, but it’s the one we have for loss, to soothe that ache when someone is ripped away from our lives. I remember thinking, after Stroud took Carver, that I should have told him to stay in Kirkwall, that I should have used the story. 

I hate that story so much. 

And I’m going to have to say something like that to Fenris.

***

Hawke isn’t been staying at the camp. Closer to Denerim, there is a camp in desperate need of blankets and food, and Hawke volunteered to make the supply run because she knew Fenris was here. She explains it all as she pushes a tiny toddler into Fenris’ arms, before she busies herself helping Caris and Adari load her wagon.

“Her name is Lea, short for, well,” Hawke says, and she seems self-conscious, as if he would be offended that she named their child after a beautiful and caring woman who did not deserve her fate. 

“It’s wonderful,” he murmurs, and Lea squirms in his grasp, turning to try and reach for Hawke. Fenris is a stranger to her, and he is unprepared for how much the child’s indifference pricks at his pride, how much it hurts to set her back on the ground so she can rush to her mother’s side.

Lea has dark hair and green eyes, her ears far more tapered than he would have thought of an elf-blooded human. She also her mother’s breathtaking smile and shows that to Caris and Adari as she passes them smooth rocks like they are the most valuable of gemstones.

He aches for the time lost with Lea, to see Hawke heavy with their child. Lea seems more interested in the children than she is in him. He tries not to wear his disappointment openly and knows that he’s failed by Hawke’s soft chuckle. “She is shy around strange adults. Give her time.”

“She’s your daughter,” Caris says, his tone flat, and his hand is on Adari’s shoulder. He glares at Hawke.

“And she’s excited to meet her brother,” Hawke says simply, voice kind. “Because I’d like us to be a family, if you’ll have us.”

Fenris almost scoffs, because of course, they’ll have Lea and Hawke, but then he sees the pale look to Adari’s face, her tan skin nearly grey. 

“We can stay in the camp, if you’d prefer,” Fenris says, as if he doesn’t want to rush to Hawke’s home. He cannot bear the thought of not waking up beside her, but if it will erase the fear on Adari’s face, the anger in Caris’ eyes, he will do it.

He reaches to grip Hawke’s hand, because if she is going back towards Denerim, he will not waste a moment without her. “It’s a hard ride from here to there, but it’s a house, with a real roof and a hearth. It leaks sometimes, but it’s easy enough to fix with magic.”

Caris says nothing, but Adari takes another stone when Lea hands it to her. Fenris closes his eyes because he cannot help staring, willing them to accept Hawke’s tentative offer. 

“Do you have animals?” Adari asks carefully. She misses their barn, even the chickens. 

Hawke’s voice is warm and gentle. “Just a horse at the moment. I barely can manage a lean-to, but I expect there will have to be a lot of building if you were to stay with us.” She pauses, and Fenris opens his eyes because he knows the tone she’s using, her placating “hail-fellow-well-met” voice when she was trying to seem as pleasant as possible. “We could have a barn and cows, maybe a goat. And we’d have to put an addition onto the house. There’s room enough for all of us if we share rooms, but I’d expect Caris--at least--is old enough that he would want his own room.”

And she smiles at them, the smile that opened doors in Kirkwall and still found them more trouble than they can handle. 

Adari smiles back easily, but it’s Caris’ lips twitching up into a smile that makes Fenris relax. He squeezes Caris’ shoulder, tugs on one of Adari’s braids. He does not know Lea enough to know what she will tolerate, but that will come. 

He wants to hold his daughter, to get her to give him stones and her easy smiles, but first, he wants to go home, to the house that Hawke keeps warning him is tiny and cramped. It could be smaller than Gamlen’s home in Kirkwall, smaller than even Merrill’s, and he wouldn’t care. 

Hawke will be there. Their family will be there.

***

_3 Justinian, Dragon 9:37_

It’s decided. When the ship goes to port, Fenris will get off. And then we sail for a week. After a week, Anders, and I will get off with the mages, to get them to somewhere safe. Anders can’t be trusted alone, though I trust him more now that we’re away from Kirkwall, now that we’re helping mages again. 

Fenris will go his way, and I will go mine. We probably won’t see each other again, because I don’t think there’s a chance of either of us being welcomed to the Maker’s side. 

May I never have another fight that hard. It’s much easier to fight an enemy that you want to kill. It’s not so easy to look into the eyes of the man you love and tell him that you would rather live believing that he’s safe than dying at his side.

He knows, he has to know, that things aren’t safe for mages, and I can’t leave Anders alone. I wanted to say that we could meet again, in Denerim or Halamshiral, anywhere. 

But we hear of fighting in other Circles, and already there’s a rumor that an Exalted March is heading to Kirkwall. 

I’m a wanted woman, and Fenris will die to keep me safe. I won’t let him commit suicide.

He deserves a life. He’s only now free of Danarius, and it’s too much to make him pay the price of my mistakes. 

Isabela watched the entire fight and she said nothing until Fenris was gone. 

“It’s lonely,” she said, and there was pain in those words, a past that she’s never exactly indulged. “Just make sure this is what you want, Hawke.”

She winked, because nothing can be serious for too long, but I know what she meant. 

This is the right decision. I can’t watch him die, too.

***

The house is indeed small, but they manage. Adari goes to the local school, set up in the blacksmith’s house. Caris sometimes travels with Hawke on supply runs into Denerim, both for their home and for the mage camps, and Hawke enthuses about how well his magic is progressing. They manage to build a building that could be a technically called a barn, and Adari has chickens again. Caris adds to Hawke’s small garden of healing herbs and doesn’t complain (much) that he’s been placed in charge of the weeding.

Hawke coos over his terrible drawing, and she places her journals and his attempts on shelves. She has another journal that he hasn’t read, but he won’t ask. She hasn’t offered, and he doesn’t think he can handle knowing how much the separation hurt her just yet. Perhaps in time, when her hair is as silver as his own and their children are grown. 

Hawke hides half their gold under the floorboards, a trick she learned in Kirkwall, and Fenris catches her writing in the new journal, keeping track of the money. He doesn’t ask how much she thinks they need before they can have a larger house or build onto this one. Fenris trusts her. 

Work is easier to find in the city, less back-breaking than simply farming, and he comes home to a loud house. Adari and Caris still bicker as siblings do, and Lea’s shrieks of laughter do little to drown them out. 

Some nights, when Hawke is in the mage camps alone, he comes home and takes all three children to the tavern, because he is still a terrible cook. He tucks Adari and Lea onto their cot and reads to them both, then reminds Caris not to stay up too late. He still goes to bed alone on those nights, though now his blankets smell of Hawke. Better still, on those nights, he sometimes wakes to the feeling of her stroking the curve of his ear, humming tunelessly. 

There are nights where he doesn’t come home and Caris complains about the burned bread that Hawke tried to cook for them. 

And then there are the nights when the five of them sit at the long table, mocking the odd-tasting soup that Caris made from bits of this and that in the pantry. It’s too salty by far, but Hawke tells horror stories of what she ate late in her pregnancy, when she was too large to move. “This is so much better,” she says, over and over, and Caris beams with pride. 

Hawke holds Lea in her arms when Fenris reads to the girls. It’s possible that he reads until long after Adari has begun to lightly snore, because he had forgotten the soft look in Hawke’s eyes when he reads aloud. 

It seems a small thing to forget, but there are others. He had forgotten that she puts lavender in her pillows, because the smell always made Bethany sleep better when they were girls. Now Hawke can’t sleep without it. He had forgotten her braying laughter, how she would snort and Leandra would get a look of absolute despair. 

He had forgotten the scar on the inside of her thigh, a girlhood misadventure that ended with Hawke nearly impaled on a fencepost. He had forgotten how much he missed her above him, his hands on her thighs and her body spread open to him. 

Fenris had forgotten how terribly loud Hawke was at all things, even when she tries to be quiet, until Caris pounds loudly on their door and declares, “I am trying to forget that I’m hearing any of this, but it will be easier if you’d stop.”

Hawke starts giggling almost immediately and the moment is lost. “Bodahn was more circumspect in his reminders that I was keeping the whole house awake,” she whispers.

“I wasn’t aware,” Fenris says, and it’s a luxury to stretch out beside her, to reach out and know his hand will curl around her hip. 

“Oh, he’d never say anything while you were there, just a ‘Late night, serah?’ with this cheeky little grin.” Hawke presses her face against his neck, and he can feel her smiling against his skin. “He was a character.”

Fenris strokes her hair. “We may see him again,” he whispers. 

Hawke stills for a moment. “I’d like to believe that.” She splays her fingers out on his stomach, and he can sense the sadness in her still, the mourning for Kirkwall and what they’ve lost. 

“I have reason to believe in fate.” His lips brush over her hair, her forehead. “And reason to hope for the future.”

Hawke says nothing in response, only moves so she’s holding onto him, tethering him here in this too-small house that smells of lavender and scorched food. Their children sleep across the hall, and there is a hope for a better home, a better life, beneath their floorboards. 

Fenris knows that he could wish for more, for wealth or security, to know that Aveline and Donnic are safe. He might wish that it were safe to go back to Kirkwall, to live in Hawke’s mansion. He could wish for a way to contact Varania, to tell her that he wants another chance to talk to her, to bring her into this family.

Instead he kisses the top of Hawke’s head and murmurs, “Tomorrow, I think Caris might take the girls to the market.”

Hawke laughs, loud and bright, and she pokes his side hard. “You are terrible,” she declares. Then, “I think Adari needs another tunic, and I’m sure she will have opinions.”

There are dreams and wishes, but if they never move beyond this, Fenris knows he will be content and that he is home.

***

_4 Justinian, Dragon 9:37_

Fenris, 

I know that you’re going to read these, unless you throw them into the first fire you find. 

Probably won’t though. You are far more nostalgic than you give yourself credit for, and I adore that about you.

This is everything, all my memories from Kirkwall, and I want you to have them. I can’t take you with me, but I’m hoping you’ll take this piece of me with you. 

If there is ever a moment where you would doubt this, know that I love you. You are all the family I have left in this world (well, besides the dog and Carver, but Carver wants to make his own way) and I wake up every morning a better woman for having loved you. 

Not that you make it easy. 

If I had days, I could fill these pages with how much I love you, everything I adore, but we have hours and I need sleep. 

Know that I carry you in my heart and know that I am yours, no matter how far apart life takes us. 

All my love, 

Hawke


End file.
